


Maelstrom

by thewindupbird



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-15 02:53:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewindupbird/pseuds/thewindupbird
Summary: Here’s the thing about driving halfway across the country to see someone. You can’t really deny, after that, that you’re pretty much head over heels for them.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This technically starts a few months after the _I love your bones_ series, but I don't think you need to read that one to keep up with this. Nor do I think that this one necessarily has to be attached to that one. Both can be stand-alones, so whichever you prefer.
> 
> Oh. And get ready for some angst.
> 
> \---
> 
> This is a work of fiction and is in no way meant to depict the real lives of any persons involved.
> 
> This comes from a place of love. Let's boogie, boys!

_Shane_

  
It… it hasn’t exactly come at the most convenient time. At least, that’s what Shane tells himself as he makes one more check of his apartment to make sure he isn’t forgetting anything.  
  
BuzzFeed wants him to cover something in New York… they are doing a lengthy documentary of sorts, and his work and his onscreen personality are just what they are looking for and so, they’re going to do some kind of exchange. Shane will _'work closely with new teammates…'_ that’s what the email had said, amping up the opportunity and all the while pussyfooting around the fact that he will have to uproot his life. Someone from New York will come here, sit at Shane’s desk, and Shane will go and sit at theirs, two thousand miles away. It isn’t going to be forever, it’s only six months.  
  
Telling Ryan had been hard. He knew it would be hard, but maybe he just hadn’t anticipated _how_ difficult it would be. He told him one Friday night out, having to shout a little, over the noise of the bar, because he was coasting on that half-drunk, emboldened, warm feeling that alcohol brings, and Ryan had been laughing and he’d thought, stupidly, that they were both fine enough to deal with it.  
  
Whatever they were doing, this Thing they had… it was precarious, still. It wasn’t so much that Shane thought it would shatter and break like he had spent so long thinking it would — but rather that it would… implode somehow, devastatingly, in a way neither of them expected. And so maybe it was because of that underlying feeling that it remained secret. Why they didn’t talk about this Thing a lot, why they didn’t touch at all at work. The whole thing felt sort of like it was on the brink of something else, and— and even when they were together, just them, there was this intensity, this waiting feeling — submerged and subtle, but humming away constantly, that maybe neither of them wanted to touch. Something that felt somehow vast in its intensity, something that made Shane’s chest feel tight, his breath come thin, when he lingered over it too long.  
  
In the bar, Ryan had looked at him and Shane watched his eyes change, even in the low light, and thought _shit._  
  
“New York?” Ryan had asked and their smiles had both flickered out so quickly, and Shane was left toying with his glass on its coaster.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Whoa. Okay… for how long?”  
  
“Uh, six months?” Shane had offered, like it wasn’t set in stone.  
  
Ryan floundered for a minute, and then asked: “What about Unsolved?” and he said it in this strange way, almost like it was pre-recorded, and Shane cocked his head at him, but Ryan looked away.  
  
Shane licked his lips. “Um, well that’s really up to you. We can either extend the break, or… or you can find someone else to—”  
  
“Do you still _want_ to do it?” Ryan asked. “I mean,” his dark eyes flickered over the room without seeing it as he tried to find something to joke about in this situation. “You’re not going to come back all hot shot New York—”  
  
“Well, yeah, Ryan, that’s the plan. With an accent—” Shane supplied, affecting a passable Brooklyn accent, latching onto this tiny thread of humour and just trying to pull it out as far as he could, get Ryan smiling again, take some of this weight off of his own chest.  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan said, laughing a little. “You can’t be on the show, if that happens.”  
  
“Okay, okay,” Shane acquiesced, “No New York accent…” And for a moment they looked at one another over the table, the noise of too many other people talking surrounding them, and Shane had suddenly wanted to cancel everything, just stay here in L.A. More than that, he wanted to reach out and draw Ryan to him by the back of his neck, press close, feel his heartbeat against his own chest.  
  
Of course, he didn’t.  
  
It was a lot. It was too much, but Shane wasn’t about to turn down a good job opportunity just to do this Thing. Neither of them could stay at BuzzFeed forever, he knew that. He would be stupid to just— just stay. What, would he just hang around BuzzFeed until Ryan left? The impracticality of staying here in Los Angeles, of just waving a hand and shrugging and saying _You know what? Fuck it,_ and staying here where it was familiar, at his desk beside Ryan’s, doing Unsolved, sharing either one of their beds… staying here _with Ryan_ just because it was good right now… That kind of impractical thinking had been foreign to Shane before now and, he reminded himself, it was ridiculous to let this opportunity go, and so he just pushed it all down. He reverted back to some safer place, all reason and logic, and said: “It’s only six months.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan had answered, like he hadn’t actually understood the words that had just come out of Shane’s mouth.  
  
“And then I’ll be back. Unsolved, ghost hunting… back to normal.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan said again, pushing a hand through his hair, dropping Shane’s eyes again.  
  
They both lapsed into silence. Shane’s mouth felt very dry. Swallowing, he tore his eyes away from Ryan, scanned the bar, their table, his hand around his drink. He realized he was holding it very tightly and he loosened his fingers.  
  
Taking a breath, he asked, “You wanna get outta here?”  
  
“Yup,” Ryan said, sitting a little straighter. Shane sort of nodded, downed the last of his beer, and then stood up to go and pay.  
  
“Wait—” Ryan told him, reaching for his wallet, but Shane shook his head, reached out and, for a second, his fingers brushed Ryan’s collarbone through his shirt before, almost too quick, he sort of aborted the gesture, and clapped his shoulder instead, awkwardly.  
  
“I got it.”  
  
They had gone back to Ryan’s. Not because it was closer, but because it felt right. Fair. Shane was the one leaving, after all. They talked about it — Shane leaving — almost animatedly in the entryway, in the elevator, in the hallway to Ryan’s apartment, but as soon as Ryan shut the apartment door behind them, they both fell silent.  
  
“Are you—” Ryan began and Shane already knew the question. “I mean you’re doing this for the opportunity, right? And not to—”  
  
Shane had been caught so tightly between the truth, the practical solidity of it, and not wanting to hurt Ryan, that he acted too quickly to really know why he was doing it. Leaning forward, and down, he caught Ryan up and kissed him, hard.  
  
Things followed sequentially from there, as might be expected.  
  
He never answered the question.

~*~

For the last month or so, they carry on as usual, until the morning of Shane’s flight arrives.  
  
He’d told Ryan already that he didn’t want any “tearful goodbyes”, and so they’d agreed to just… not. Not see each other in the evening before he flew out _“It’s just easier that way, Ry, you know…”_  
  
He didn’t often use that nickname.  
  
And Ryan had agreed, (but, Shane knew, he hadn’t really given Ryan much of a choice). Yesterday morning, Ryan had fucked him, twice. The second time had both of them spent and shaking, but desperate for something more than release. It was like they were searching for an impossible connection, a link between them that they could hold onto in one another’s absence, and Shane had clung to Ryan’s headboard and the sheets beneath him and pressed his face into the mattress as both of them gasped breathlessly towards something neither of them knew exactly how to hold onto, or how to name.  
  
Afterwards, they had showered and gone to work, and when five thirty rolled around, Ryan started packing up to go home. That was it. He’d taken his time gathering up his things while Shane finished all his last minute paperwork, and Shane knew Ryan was lingering, and he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep any other feelings at bay, to keep from saying anything stupid.  
  
“Well,” Ryan said. “See you in six months.”  
  
“See you in six months.” Shane swivelled his chair and glanced towards Ryan’s face, but he couldn’t— he _couldn’t_ meet his eyes.  
  
He heard Ryan take a breath, and then he was shouldering his bag and heading out the door into the sunset. Shane stared hard at his computer screen and didn’t know whether or not Ryan looked back.  
  
 And now the morning of his flight is here, and six months suddenly feels like a very, very long time.


	2. I-III

I  
_Shane_

New York is… wet. Shane really doesn’t have any proper rain gear, after Los Angeles, and he spends the first few days of work in soaked shoes and a damp hoodie and it’s sort of miserable. There’s a lot of new faces, a lot of names, and he smiles and shakes hands, and makes small-talk, but it all sort of blurs.  
  
His apartment has roaches. It’s so cliché that he almost fucking laughs, but then he finds them where he keeps the bread, and the popcorn, and then it’s really not funny anymore.  
  
There’s been no word from Ryan. And anyway, Shane reasons, a lot about what they’re doing has been unspoken. They aren’t really officially anything, and so they can’t officially be long distance. Or break up. And Shane tells himself that he has no right to be hurt over the silence between them now.  
  
He’s sleeping too much. He knows that. He wishes he could bring himself to care more than he does. It’s late one Saturday afternoon, almost four, when his phone rings. At first, he’s confused, because it’s been such a long time since anyone’s actually _called_ him that he’s forgotten what his ring tone sounds like. For a moment he thinks it’s his alarm and, vaguely panicked, wonders how long he’s been fucking sleeping, and then remembers it’s the weekend.  
  
He rolls to sitting on the couch and picks it up and sees Ryan’s name. He reacts so quickly he almost drops the phone trying to press the answer button.  
  
“Hey,” Ryan says, and it is simultaneously so familiar and so far away that Shane finds himself a little stunned. Ryan sounds cheerful. “Just wanted to make sure you’re still alive.”  
  
“I’m at least seventy percent alive,” Shane hears himself say, and there’s a sound like a breath of laughter, but he can’t _see_ him, so he can’t be sure, and then Ryan’s asking “Were you sleeping?” and it’s intimate somehow. More than it should be, he thinks.  
  
“Sort of,” Shane lies. He’d been _out_. “Time difference, you know.”  
  
“Yeah, that three hour time difference must be killer,” Ryan teases. Shane feels something loosen in his chest at that, and it’s such a fucking relief. Silence falls between them. For a minute, it’s peaceful, and then Shane’s heart starts beating hard. They’re both just sitting, listening, waiting. The distance between them is what silences them now and, he realizes, this was what had scared him so fucking much in the first place, the magnitude of this thing. The fact that he missed Ryan with a physical _ache_ when they were thirty minutes away by Uber, and now, after letting himself get close, there’s this yawning chasm of literal time and space that’s going to change everything, and he’s trying not to admit to himself that he was stupid to open himself up to this thing in the first place. No amount of inviting demons and ghosts to remove his spine from his body scares him as much as admitting to his need for Ryan… And maybe that’s why he left L.A. in the first place…  
  
“So—” Shane starts, a little desperately, when the pause is well beyond going on too long, and then Ryan’s talking — so fast and jumbled that Shane almost misses it.  
  
“I wanna see you—”  
  
For a second, he’s confused, and then Ryan’s clarifying, “I want to see your face, let’s FaceTime or something.”  
  
“But you always tell me my face is stupid.”  
  
“It is,” Ryan assures him. “I just need to be reminded.”  
  
Shane searches for his glasses and, holding them in one hand says, “Okay. I’m hanging up.”  
  
Ryan sort of splutters on the other end of the line and Shane smirks a little. “Hang up, so I can FaceTime you,” he clarifies, and Ryan curses and Shane presses the cancel button.  
  
He uses his laptop to call, and Ryan answers almost immediately, and he’s already smiling hugely when the video comes up and Shane grips the edge of this couch-that-isn’t-really-his-couch hard.  
  
“Hey. You’re a dick,” Ryan’s laughing, and Shane breaks into what feels like his first genuine smile in days.  
  
They somehow fall into easy banter, and Shane almost forgets how far away they are until they’re starting to wind the conversation down nearly an hour later.  
  
Ryan had gotten tired of holding his phone up some time ago, and so Shane’s looking at him sideways, lying down on his bed, the phone beside him, and Shane thinks about how this image onscreen is so real, but really just pixels, and he suddenly feels very fucking alone.  
  
He doesn’t realize they’ve lapsed into another silence, both of them just looking at each other.  
  
“Hey, Shane?” Ryan asks, softer than before.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You are coming back, right? I mean…”  
  
“Yeah, I mean, I guess I’ve gotten used to L.A.”  
  
Ryan exhales relief.  
  
“I miss— you know, I really miss the... the In-N-Out burgers.”  
  
Ryan’s startled into laughter, and even Shane gives in, chuckling softly.  
  
“You, sir, are an asshole,” Ryan says, but something’s already sad again in his eyes, and Shane wonders what _he_ looks like. He drops his gaze without thinking. Softly, Ryan says “I should’ve— I wanted to see you before you left.”  
  
“Ugh, Ryan, that’s the worst,” Shane says, scrubbing a hand down his face.  
  
“Yeah, I know _you_ think that, but it’s like— it feels, I don’t know—”  
  
“Like shit?” Shane supplies.  
  
“Yeah, it feels like shit.”  
  
Shane presses his lips together and nods once.  
  
They go quiet again, and Shane hates this kind of tension and so he sits up a little straighter, something popping in his back. “I should probably think about supper,” he says, eyes flickering vaguely towards his-kitchen-that’s-not-really-his-kitchen. He’s trying to sign off.  
  
Ryan says ‘yeah,’ a little hollowly, but Shane’s not looking at the screen yet. He gives himself a few seconds, and then meets Ryan’s brown eyes again, across ones and zeros and two thousand miles and lets himself _hate it_ , just for a moment. Lets himself wonder _what the fuck have I done?_  
  
“Hey, so… there’s never gonna be a good time for me to ask this, and it’s going to be fucking awkward,” Ryan’s saying, and Shane takes a shallow breath. “But what— what the hell am I supposed to be doing, here, Shane?”  
  
Shane doesn’t answer right away. He balances his bony elbows on his knees and folds his hands in front of his mouth, eyes on Ryan. He’s not helping, but he doesn’t know how to respond without pushing for something that might not be right for either of them.  
  
A little desperately, his anxiety swallowing him up — Shane can practically see it — Ryan keeps going, “Like are we waiting, or are we supposed to hook up with other people, or…?”  
  
“Do you want to hook up with other people?”  
  
“Do _you_?” Ryan shoots back.  
  
“I don’t know. Not particularly,” Shane says. “But I haven’t… six months is a long time, Ryan.”  
  
“Yeah, I know it’s a fucking long time, that’s why I’m asking.”  
  
Shane thinks of several things to say, some of which are hurtful, or might be hurtful without meaning to be, and some of which are far more honest, but too terrifying to say.  
  
“Well,” he asks, unfairly. “What do you want to do?”  
  
Ryan searches Shane’s eyes and Shane wonders if he finds what he’s looking for there, and what that might be. In the end, he says “Let me know when you’re flying back in. I’ll meet you at the airport.”  
  
And suddenly Shane feels like crying. It hits hard and sudden and so he laughs instead, and it sounds fake to his own ears, and he’s sure it does to Ryan’s. He could, he thinks, say _you don’t have to_ , but that would be belittling Ryan’s decision, and he doesn’t want to be like that, this time. And he wants him to. He wants Ryan’s to be the first face he sees when he gets back.  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, and it feels almost like giving in to something stronger than him — like collapsing. “Yeah, that would be nice.”  
  
And everything comes a little more into focus.  
  
It doesn’t make it hurt any less.  
  


  
II  
_Ryan_

Somehow, time passes. He sort of gets used to sleeping alone again. It doesn’t mean he has to like it. And it’s funny because he almost hadn’t realized how much of Shane had filtered into his life. Weeks later, and he’s still finding little bits and pieces of their life — the newer one — the one that started last winter and spread warmly into spring and they started just staying at one another’s apartments without an excuse. It’s little bits of receipts and paper Shane’s written on and forgotten behind. Things that say _shoot March 23 studio 4_ and _buy milk_. and finding a stray hair or two stuck to the fibres of his sheets, much paler than Ryan’s own, when he strips the bed to wash it. It’s the fact that there’s still fucking Shredded Wheat in his cupboard, which is, in Ryan’s opinion, the devil’s own cereal. It’s one of Shane’s hoodies which has somehow found its way to the back of Ryan’s closet. He finds it when he’s looking for one of his hats, crumpled and a little dusty.  
  
It doesn’t smell like Shane anymore, and the disappointment that brings almost replaces the ' _oh this is ridiculous, let no one ever find out I did this_ ’ thoughts he’s thinking, even as he checks.  
  
He has a key to Shane’s place. Sort of unofficially. Shane doesn’t have a key to his, and it isn’t like it was really _planned_ , Ryan guesses, unless it was, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask. The second-last day at the office together, Shane had handed him a newly cut key and asked him if he would mind just checking on his place just a couple times a month or something, bring in any mail and make sure nothing goes spectacularly wrong.  
  
Ryan had held onto it until the metal felt warm in his hand. Now, it is a glittering reminder on his keychain: not only that Shane is gone, but also, — and maybe it’s stupid but— it feels sort of like a promise, too…  
  
He isn’t sure if it’s safe to think that, or not.  
  
He checks up on Shane’s apartment anyway. More than once, he considers just crashing there, sleeping in his bed, but he never does. That was just a little too pathetic.  
  
After that first phone call, they start texting and FaceTiming more, and that’s familiar at least, and a kind of connection, but as work picks up — even without Unsolved to film — they both get busy. Shane left at the very beginning of April, and by midsummer the texts are a lot fewer and further between, and the calls are almost non-existent. Ryan tries to pretend that that doesn’t bother him. Any plans they made for Ryan to visit sort of fizzle out because neither of them have the time, and there’s just never enough convenient days in a row, and, and, and…  
  
Ryan generally feels sort of horrible and anxious about it until, invariably, his phone will buzz and it’s Shane calling again, and they talk just like always. That settles his anxiety, for a while. And Shane has finally stopped looking like he’s just rolled out of bed all the time, and that makes Ryan feel better, too. And more recently, Shane’s sometimes out when Ryan calls, and a text will arrive at 11:30 p.m. Ryan’s time, and 2:30 a.m. Shane’s — and it’s _Hey, sorry, I was out. Let’s talk tomorrow?_. So at least he’s making friends. The idea of Shane just sitting around with the cockroaches isn’t exactly a happy one.  
  
Sometimes they talk about people at Shane’s office whose faces Ryan doesn’t know, and what it’s like living in New York. Mostly they talk about what’s happening in L.A., and what Ryan’s doing, and what the next season of Unsolved should include. They never talk about what will happen to them when Shane comes back, but he thinks about it.  
  
Ryan finally breaks down in September. Shane’s contract will be done in just under three weeks and it finally feels real — that he’ll see him again. “So, have you looked at flights home yet?” It’s the first time he’s asked.  
  
“Not yet,” Shane answers, halfway through his supper. Some kind of sandwich that looks plain and unappealing to Ryan. “I’ll let you know when I do.”  
  
“I’m excited to see you,” Ryan says, and his voice sort of stutters at the end, like he isn’t sure if he should tack on a ‘man,’ or a ‘dude,’ at the end, just to make it sound less… just less.  
  
Shane puts his food down, pushes his fingers through his hair. He has his glasses on, and the light from his laptop reflects in his lenses and Ryan can’t see his eyes until he looks up and says “We’ve still got a bit.”  
  
“Yeah, I know, but—“ Ryan answers, his heart sort of fluttering against his ribs which suddenly feel too tight. “But only a few weeks, and not— it’s no six months, you know?”  
  
Shane toys with his plate. “Actually, I’m probably going to see my parents for a while. It’s been a long time since I was home.”  
  
“Oh— yeah totally,” Ryan says, acting like that doesn’t hurt. But he gets it. Family is important to Shane, that’s cool. It’s important to him, too. “No, that’s— I’m not pushing you, just…”  
  
“I want to see you,” Shane tells him, cutting him off. “I do. This isn’t me… it’s just— I just… I need to wind down or something… it’s been a lot, working here… Maybe I need a break or… whatever.”  
  
“I get it,” Ryan says, trying hard to sound like he does. And no, he _does_ , it’s just that… does coming back home to L.A., to Ryan, feel like work to Shane?  All at once he realizes that Shane maybe _doesn’t_ feel at home where Ryan does. He swallows and makes his voice as bright as he can and says: “Just let me know when you’re ready, man. Whenever. I’ll meet you, like I said.”  
  
Shane meets his eyes through the screen for a second, but it still makes Ryan hate this distance. He watches Shane take a breath he can’t quite hear. “Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t— don’t be sorry,” Ryan says. “It’s fine.”  
  
“I just feel…”  
  
They both go quiet, and Ryan’s trying to pretend his heart isn’t about to hammer out of his chest, and wonders if he’s about to die in a bunch of shards of his own shattered ribs and anxiousness while Shane contemplates his own coffee table.  
  
“I just feel sort of like I’m not really here. Or anywhere,” Shane says, and it’s not the kind of confession he usually offers up, even when they delve into more serious talks. “I just want some time to feel, like— feel solid again, or something.”  
  
“Are you saying you feel like a ghost?” Ryan asks, trying to joke, but instead he sounds sort of breathless.  
  
“If ghosts were real,” Shane responds, “Which they’re not… this would be it.”  
  
Ryan sort of hates that answer. “Why?” he asks.  
  
“I dunno,” Shane tells him. “Sad, I guess.”  
  
Ryan exhales, and oh God, he wants to be there with him so badly and, of course, he can’t. Rubbing the heels of his hands over his eyes and through his hair he says, a little desperately “Shane—”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Shane says, voice softer and calmer by comparison. “It’s not— it’s just… how it is. It happens. I get over it.”  
  
And yeah— this. Ryan knows this. It’s in the way Shane says _I get over it_ , like it’s happened before. The way Shane gets quiet sometimes, or irritated. He noticed it at the Dauphine, and sometimes while they’re stuck in L.A. traffic on the way somewhere. Ryan’s always just accepted it. He’s never brought it up, and now he wonders if he should have.  
  
“I fucking miss you, man,” Ryan says because it’s the loudest thought in his head, but it sounds wrong, so he says it again, softer: “I miss you, Shane.”  
  
And Shane half-laughs and half-exhales something that is far from laughter and looks at him in this way that just makes Ryan ache. He watches Shane swallow before he says “Me too. You complete _lunatic_.”  
  
Ryan starts to laugh.  
  
  


III  
_Shane_

After New York, in late September, Shane finally goes back to Illinois. It’s just his parents and him, and the still-lingering heat from summer, and it’s such a relief, somehow. He doesn’t have to perform for anyone anymore, he can just be. And, for the most part, he’s left alone. It’s not that he doesn’t see his parents, or they him, but it’s an easy, comfortable routine to fall into. He tries to tell himself that that’s what he needed.  
  
He still doesn’t feel entirely better. He doesn’t even know why he’s thinking of it in terms of ‘better’ or ‘not better’, because he can’t even pinpoint exactly what feels wrong. What he’d told Ryan had been the closest explanation. He felt… sort of absent. In his own head. His thoughts ran on without him. It’s not really a secret that he’s never really felt very much — not deeply and overwhelmingly the way that so many other people do — the way that Ryan does. And he’s always just accepted that. Or rather, he _used_ to not care.  
  
And even being in Illinois, he doesn’t really feel that much closer to Ryan. His flight back westwards really didn’t change the fact that they are still almost an entire country away, and the expanse between them feels vast and empty and Shane finally admits to himself, sitting in his backyard late one evening, that he’s scared to go back to L.A. and find that everything there is different, too. Ryan is nothing if not resilient. Maybe Ryan’s just found some new way to survive without Shane beside him. Maybe they will realize that this time apart has changed something fundamental between them, or maybe it will occur to one or both of them that whatever magnetization was there between them, before, is no longer there, now. That it was just brought about by proximity and convenience and familiarity like Shane had feared before they’d even started this... this Thing, and just when he’d let his guard down, he would be proven right once again.  
  
Sometimes he hates his mind, and the logic of it, and the way that, sometimes, it doesn't even really let him hope.  
  
Maybe if he went back to L.A. this empty, Ryan would pull away. And Shane has spent so long now, turning to Ryan almost without thinking, for a kind of refuge — for the light in Ryan’s smile to chase away Shane’s lower moods — that he isn't sure he knows what to do without it anymore. And that is terrifying unto itself. He hadn’t meant to look to Ryan for any of that. Shane doesn't want to push that responsibility onto anyone else. It should be his, alone. He has to be able to keep his own head above water, as it were.  
  
His brother, Finn, comes home to visit after Shane’s been home a few days. It’s the first time in a while everyone could be home together and, for a while, Shane feels a little more normal. For the first time since New York, he feels a little more like himself. They sit downstairs in the basement, on the ratty old couch and watch the old black and white cowboy movies they used to watch as kids, and eat from the pizza place up the street, which is _far_ superior to L.A. pizza (Shane thinks), and they just generally have a good time. It feels different, to see Finn here in their childhood home, than when he sees him in Los Angeles.  
  
It’s just past midnight — Sunday in Illinois, and around ten on Saturday in Los Angeles, when Shane’s phone rings with a FaceTime call, and he knows even before he checks, that it’s Ryan. For a moment, he just looks at it, the laughter fading from his eyes, and then he hits ignore and puts the phone face down on the coffee table.  
  
“Who was that?” Finn asks.  
  
“Just— no one,” Shane says, because he can’t bring himself to say _just Ryan_. Finn raises his eyebrows but doesn’t push it. Yet. Instead, he gets another piece of pizza and turns his eyes back to the screen and Shane tries not to examine too closely the feeling of trepidation in his gut. He knows Finn well enough to know that it’s not the end of this conversation.  
  
“Hey, how’s Ryan by the way,” Finn asks, predictably, a few minutes later. “What happened to Unsolved while you were off gallivanting in New York?”  
  
“It’s on hold until I get back,” Shane says, and when Finn continues watching him expectantly, Shane caves a little. “Ryan’s good, I guess. He seems good.” He thinks about how Ryan hasn’t told him again, that he missed him, and about how he hasn’t really said it back, either. He hasn’t said the words outright. And he knows that’s something that someone like Ryan isn’t likely to miss.  
  
Shane watches Finn brush flour from the pizza crust from his fingers and he _knows_ it’s coming. The question — he expects it to be something like ‘Has the ghost-hunting finally gotten you down?’ or ‘Do you guys not feel as close anymore since you’ve been gone?’ and not what Finn does actually ask which is: “How long have you guys been having a thing?” and it’s so spot on, so fucking _pinpointed_ that Shane feels his breath hitch sharply in his chest and he chokes a little.  
  
“What?” he asks, rather unconvincingly, since he’s practically hoarse.  
  
“Dude,” says Finn. “Come on. I think I know you a little.”  
  
Shane furrows his brow, runs his fingers over the bridge of his nose so he has an excuse to avert his eyes. “I… don’t really know.” He’s thinking of Ryan’s face, his eyes — magnetic and bright even through Shane’s laptop screen, and wonders why he didn’t take the call. He thinks about the way Ryan used to reach for him when they were in bed… _Jesus._ Shane stops himself, as something tightens in his chest. “I don’t know. Right now, I don’t know. And I don’t— I don’t really want to talk about it.”  
  
“Okay,” Finn says. “Then we won’t talk about it.”  
  
Shane’s quiet, eyes on the screen, but he’s not taking in anything that’s happening. “What made you think—”  
  
Finn smiles a little and shakes his head, but his eyes are on the screen when Shane looks at him. “I don’t know. You’re always looking at him when he’s not watching.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean _he’s_ into it,” Shane counters.  
  
“Yeah,” Finn says, and it sounds like he agrees, but Shane’s too used to his sarcasm to know that he doesn’t. “Yeah, you’re right, he’s definitely not.”  
  
Shane wants to ask Finn what it is that he sees in Ryan that tells him _they’re something_. He wants to know what Finn can see about ‘Shane and Ryan’ that is outside of the circle, the maelstrom that he and Ryan have somehow created for themselves, or of themselves, because if someone else can see it, this thing between them, then it must be real. And if it’s real it could, maybe, be sustainable.  
  
But in the end, Shane can’t bring himself to ask. Reaching for the remote, he turns the movie up a little. “Let’s finish this,” he says. “I don’t remember the end.”


	3. IV-V

IV  
_Ryan_

Ryan tries not to think about the fact that Shane’s general response the two times he’s really put himself out there has been the same. Each time Ryan had offered up something to Shane: ' _I’m actually… really stupidly fucking in love with you'_ ' _I really fucking miss you man. I miss you Shane.'_ Shane has come back with ‘Me too.’  
  
What, Ryan wonders, the fuck does that even mean?  
  
He knows, logically, it means _'me too’_ , but it’s not like there hasn’t always been a little seed of doubt. Only now it’s started growing…  
  
But still, Ryan succeeds in not letting it get to him until that first night that Shane doesn’t answer his call. And truthfully, it’s not even that Shane doesn’t answer that starts it, because that’s happened before. Shane’s busy, sometimes he’s out, whatever. No, it’s the fucking veritable radio silence Ryan’s gotten since Shane arrived in Illinois, and to Ryan’s texts after Shane told him: < _Made it to O’Hare >_  
  
Ryan’s had better conversations with the Spirit Box.  
  
To be fair, Ryan thinks, he hasn’t sent him anything all that important. He’s just reaching out, really, but it’s not like Shane to completely ignore him. So, the next morning, with no incoming texts of explanation _I was out, I was asleep_ Ryan’s starting to wonder if Shane’s really not coming back to L.A. at all, and so, really not coming back to _him_ , and he just doesn’t know how to tell him. And Ryan really doesn’t know what to do with that. So he backs off for a while, he doesn’t send anything, gives him some space. He trusts, and it's maybe one of the hardest things he's ever done.  
  
By late Sunday afternoon however, he gives in to his worry and shoots out a text that’s simple, as though he didn’t agonize over sending it. It reads only _Are you OK?_

And then, too early Monday morning, Ryan’s phone finally rings.  
  
It’s only seven or something, and Ryan may or may not have gone out with a few people from work and may or may not have gotten a little too drunk for a Sunday night, and he fights through his hangover, and the heaviness in his limbs to roll over in bed and grab his phone off the nightstand.  
  
“ ‘Lo?”  
  
“Hey man.” It’s Shane, speaking softly like he knows he’s woken him up. “Sorry, I figured you’d still be sleeping. I wanted to catch you before you went to work.”  
  
“What’s up” Ryan asks, still half out of it. He asks it like _what’s wrong?_  
  
“Nothing,” Shane says. “I just… sorry I didn’t answer yesterday, I was with Finn, and… sorry.”  
  
“Oh, Finn’s there?” Ryan asks, reaching up to rub his eyes with one hand, the phone held to his ear with the other. He stares at the ceiling fan, blurry without his glasses.  
  
“Yeah, he came down to visit our parents — have a sort of family thing.” Shane goes quiet for a moment or two, then says “I saw you called… everything good?”  
  
Ryan says “I guess I just wanted to talk,” And he can’t know that Shane thinks, for the hundred-thousandth time, that Ryan is braver than he will ever be, even in just the things he says.  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says. “I… I don’t know why I called you so early, I can call later.”  
  
“It’s okay.” Ryan says quickly, pushing himself to sitting. “It’s good. I’m up. How’s Chicago?”  
  
“It’s not Chicago,” Shane says, but they both know this already.  
  
It’s still easy to talk, but they both know there’s something lying just under the surface. Namely, why Shane hasn’t booked a flight to L.A. yet. Ryan doesn’t ask though. Not even after they’ve talked for half an hour and he’s gotten up, and made a coffee, and gone to sit on his couch instead of the bed.  
  
“It’s weird to be talking on the phone,” he points out, laughing softly, and Shane echoes his laugh and says, “Yeah, I guess. I didn’t even think about it. I guess, out here, everything feels like it’s sort of out of time. Like technology hasn’t advanced or something. Maybe ‘cause I grew up here.”  
  
“Yeah. You’re fucking weird,’ Ryan jokes.

"Anyway, you like analog things," Shane counters.  
  
And then somehow, they’re at the end of this conversation and Shane is saying “The reason I called… actually, I… I’ve sort of got some bad news.”  
  
Ryan braces himself, genuinely leans back against the couch and tightens his grip on the phone. “Okay,” he says, “hit me.”  
  
“I… I’m gonna call work, I think,” Shane’s saying, in a very carefully calculated way — soft and level. “To take a leave of absence. I just wanted to run it by you, first, since we were supposed to start Unsolved again soon.”  
  
“Oh,” Ryan says. “Shit. Okay. Shit, are you okay?”  
  
There is a long pause. “I dunno,” Shane says, softer. “I think I’m just run down. Or something.”  
  
“But— you’re still coming back to L.A. so, maybe--” Ryan begins, tentative, but when there’s no answer it stops being a statement at all. “Aren’t you?”  
  
Shane’s quiet and then he says, speaking slowly as if making sure the words sound right: “I don’t— I mean, if I take the leave, they can’t pay for my flight back. That was in the contract. So, I’m just… I’m just waiting for my final pay from New York to come in before I start looking at flights…” He can practically see Shane rubbing the space above his eyebrow, awkwardly. “Before I can afford to come back.”  
  
“Okay, yeah, that makes sense,” says Ryan, feeling a little sick. “When will your pay come in?”  
  
“There’s some legal stuff, tax forms and… so I don’t know. It could be the end of this month or the beginning of November they said.”  
  
“Jesus, that’s like a whole other month.”  
  
“That’s generally how months work,” Shane says.  
  
“Shut up, you know what I mean. Fuck, it’s like you’ll have been away longer than you’ve been here… I don’t know, I thought—“ _Thought you’d wanna see me,_ he thinks. But then, that’s not important. “Why— so you’re just feeling kinda run down. That’s why you’re taking leave?” Ryan asks, double checking his facts. He’s not sure he believes it.  
  
“Yeah. I dunno, Ryan, I guess so.”  
  
Ryan’s quiet, just holding the phone, very tense. He doesn’t know if he even has the guts to ask, but...  
  
“I thought you’d be upset about Unsolved,” Shane says, “I’m really sorry, I should’ve— ”  
  
“Forget that for a second,” Ryan says, and he means it. “You’re coming back eventually, though, right? Back here?”  
  
“Yeah, probably.”  
  
“Probably?” Ryan repeats, he wants to get up, pace, because there’s something flowing fast through him like adrenaline or fear, but he finds he’s frozen in place.  
  
“I’m just—“ Shane is saying. “I’m starting to wonder if that’s the right thing for me, right now.”  
  
Ryan swallows, but then he's saying the words he's been thinking, surprising himself. “Or if I’m the right thing for you right now?” he asks, and he hates it, but his voice shakes a little.  
  
“That’s not exactly…” Shane starts, then sighs, and doesn’t finish.  
  
“How long have you been thinking this?” Ryan asks.  
  
Shane’s quiet on the other end.  
  
“Since you left?” Ryan asks. Nothing. “ _Before_ you left?” Still, nothing. Ryan breathes a sound like a laugh, but is truly far from it and says “You know, I would’ve thought you could at least _talk_ to me about something big like this, instead of keeping me in the dark this whole time.” He doesn’t mean for it to sound mean, but he thinks, maybe, it does, and he feels like an asshole immediately. But it’s fair, he has a _right_ to be, if he’s been kept on the outside. But then, Shane does hold people at an arm’s length. Ryan had just hoped that, to Shane, _he_ was different...  
  
“Me too,” Shane says quietly, and that brings Ryan back to all the times Shane’s said ‘me too’ instead of putting himself out there for Ryan and he feels a hot flash of anger, panic. With the rush, they kind of feel the same.  
  
“Listen, Ry— Ryan,” Shane is saying, and Ryan _hates_ the way he corrected himself, corrected the nickname. “It’s not you, I just—“  
  
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Shane, don’t give me that ‘it’s not you it’s me’ bullshit. Everyone knows it doesn’t mean anything.”  
  
Shane takes a breath that’s a little too sharp, but when he speaks his voice is much steadier. “ _Look_ , Ryan. I wanna see you. Just— it’s not possible, right now, all right? I don’t have the money, I don’t— frankly, I don’t have the mental fucking _endurance_ to deal with any of this, I’m fucking tired, okay? I want to sleep for a year, or something, I want to not have to feel like I need to earn my place again—”  
  
“Earn your _place_ ,” Ryan repeats. “You _have_ a place.”  
  
“—at work,” Shane continues “or with you—”  
  
“Shane—” Ryan interrupts, or tries, but Shane’s unrelenting.  
  
“Maybe I don’t want to go back to the same everything. Maybe it’s just— I’ve started to feel like I’m trapped—” Shane must figure he’s said too much because he starts backtracking. “I don’t know. I’m just spouting some _shit_ right now, I really don’t—”  
  
“Do I make you feel trapped?” Ryan asks, and somehow it’s the quietness with which he asks it that finally stops Shane.  
  
“No,” Shane says, immediately, but Ryan knows better than to just take that initial answer, and so he waits. Until the silence on the other end lasts for so long, Ryan half wonders if Shane’s hung up. But he just... trusts, and waits.  
  
Finally, Shane gives in. “It’s— sometimes... I don't know.”  
  
It’s that moment that Ryan remembers that Shane once told him, out of nowhere, in his own living room one evening, that he would probably do anything for him, and he wonders why he remembers it now, but he’s too scared to test the validity of it, in case it isn’t true.  
  
He’s been quiet too long, he realizes, because Shane says ‘Hello?’, an edge to it like he thinks Ryan might have ended the call.  
  
“I’m here,” Ryan says.  
  
“It’s not you. Believe me, it’s nothing you’ve done, or that you’re doing, I just— need to figure some stuff out,” Shane says. “Get my head back together.” He hesitates, and then asks, “Okay?”  
  
“Like Humpty Dumpty,” Ryan says, absurdly, “His head was big,” and Shane actually laughs a little.  
  
“Sure.” And then. “I should probably go… Sorry I woke you up.”  
  
“Don’t be.” So they’re done talking, Ryan guesses. They’re just gonna leave it. A little numbly, he checks the time and realizes he’d better get a move on if he doesn’t want to be late to work.  
  
Tentatively, Shane is saying “I’ll… text you, or…”  
  
“Okay, yeah,” says Ryan.  
  
“So.” A hesitation. “Bye.”  
  
Ryan thinks Shane sounds like he’s testing the waters, but he doesn’t know how to respond other than. “Oh. Yeah, bye, I guess.” It feels frighteningly final. They both wait too long, for something more, and then, when it’s clear that it’s been too long to wait, and too awkward to say bye again, Ryan pulls the phone from his ear and moves to end the call when he hears Shane’s voice come tinnily from the speaker at a distance.  
  
He quickly brings it back up. “What?”  
  
Shane trips over the beginning of the sentence so softly that Ryan almost doesn’t hear it, and then he asks, clearer, “Can I still call you when I do fly in?”  
  
Ryan’s shoulders relax, and he realizes how tightly he was holding them. He shakes his head. “You’re lucky I like this you much,” he tells him. “ ‘Cause otherwise, I’d definitely say no.”  
  
Shane sort of stumbles through an ‘okay, great’ and another ‘bye’ and then he does hang up and Ryan’s left to toss his phone down onto his couch, in a mix of worry and disappointment. But okay. So he’s coming back. Right? That’s what just happened? He sort of wants to call back just be sure, but he doesn’t. All day at work, he thinks about how it’s better to let Shane feel ready to come back then drag him back here, and maybe he shouldn’t have pushed. And Ryan knows he’s had kind of a shitty time in New York, and maybe that’s just making this bigger than it has to be… right?  
  
He doesn't know if they're still... doing this Thing, or not.  
  
Truthfully, Ryan’s not sure exactly what’s wrong, or what Shane feels is wrong. Ryan knows this whole thing is weird. It’s weird to go from friends to— to whatever this is, and not have it be at least a little strange. But suddenly their whole conversation seems even more cryptic, and Ryan’s not even sure that Shane knows what’s wrong at all, because, generally Shane is pretty straightforward, and this… this is different.  
  
He tries to put it out of his mind. And he almost succeeds. Almost. Until he wakes up at some ungodly hour on Tuesday morning, deeply anxious and sick to death of sleeping alone and, on top of that, with an idea.  
  
It doesn’t take long. Just a bit of double-checking online, squinting at his computer through his glasses in the black of his room, and then he flicks the lights on and, fifteen minutes later, he’s tossing a bag into the backseat of his Prius and pulling out into endless L.A. traffic.  
  
It’s not until the sun’s risen, and he’s been starving for nearly an hour that he starts doubting this decision and he pulls over onto the side of the road, somewhere outside Las Vegas, and stares absently, mildly panicked, at his phone screen while cars fly past him on the freeway, trying to decide what he should do. Finally, he texts Shane.  
  
<Hey, so, here’s a thought>  
  
He sends it, and tries to formulate his next text so he doesn’t sound like a complete madman, but Shane’s already typing. Ryan watches the dots, and then the text pops up with a little noise.  
  
<Shoot>  
  
<What if we drove back to L.A.? That way you don’t have to pay for a flight>  
  
Shane’s text bubbles come up, stop, come up again. <Ryan, that’s like 40 hours, that’s insane. And besides I can’t drive across the damn country> followed a moment later by <Wait, we?>  
  
_That’s right, baby,_ Ryan writes, then erases it and sends  <That’s right, big guy>, glad he can sound as jaunty as he wants to via text, because in real life, he kind of wants to throw up.  
  
<I genuinely believe that that will cost most than flying> Shane responds. <You’re insane.>  
  
<It’ll be like a fun little road trip> Ryan sends back, really gunning for this now. Suddenly, he fucking _wants_ it. Suddenly, it’s starting to feel real.  
  
<None of this sounds fun>  
  
<Also, it’s more like 30 hours, but whatever> Ryan types, fast. <And I already called in sick to work>. It’s true. He phoned a couple hours ago, and emailed, leaving messages about the stomach flu in his best Not Sick voice, because everyone knew that if you wanted to call in sick, you shouldn’t sound sick. There’s no response from Shane for a minute or so, until:  
  
<Are you actually serious?>  
  
Ryan takes a shallow breath, sending the next text before he can think too hard. <I just want to see you at least>.  
  
His phone vibrates in his hand and he answers, bringing it to his ear.  
  
“Ryan,” Shane says without preamble. “What the fuck are you doing?”  
  
“I dunno man,” Ryan says. “I’m taking a risk. Do you want to... I mean, I’m kind of just inviting myself, I know. But I can stay at a hotel or something. You don’t even have to come back to L.A. with me, I just—“ The words _I miss you_ stick in his throat this time. He doesn’t want to hear Shane just say ‘me too.’  
  
“Ryan, you can’t just drive across the country.”  
  
“It’s like, _maybe_ two thirds of the way across the country. Besides, we practically drove that long when we went to Willow Creek. It’s no big deal.”  
  
“No— _what_ are you talking about?” Shane’s using his condescending voice, and that just makes Ryan push for this _ridiculously_ idealistic notion even harder.  
  
“And this time I could actually catch a Foot. Also, you’re forgetting about Maine,” he says, fingers of his free hand tracing the steering wheel. “And Michigan and Vermont.”  
  
“Yes, I _understand_ geography, Ryan,” Shane’s saying, “And I’m _not a Bigfo_ —” but Ryan speaks over him.  
  
“Okay. Good. So let’s just see each other.” He swallows anxiously, fingers of his free hand gripping the bottom of the steering wheel tight. “Do you want to see me?”  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” Shane says, and Ryan speaks over — or even before Shane can get out the word ‘but.’  
  
“Great,” he says, “ ‘Cause I’m already in Nevada.”  
  
There’s a silence on the other end of the line and Ryan almost grins, _wishes_ he could see Shane’s face.  
  
“Ryan— this is insane,” but there it is. He’s known Shane long enough, and well enough, to hear that upward inflection in his statement, the one that means he’s intrigued. It’s enough.  
  
“Yeah, it is,” Ryan says, “See you in about twenty-seven hours.” And he hangs up. After laughing a little wildly, a release of tension and the hilarity, the absurdity of the situation, he collects himself and pulls back onto the highway.  
  
His phone lights up and he checks it the next time he’s stopped in traffic. Shane’s sent him another text. This one says  <Fuck you Ryan Bergara, don’t fall asleep at the wheel> followed by <See you when you get here> and there’s something open about that little handful of words — open and waiting, and Ryan feels excitement rush through his veins like a fucking drug, and it gets him through the Las Vegas traffic jams.  
  
Later, it gets him through the strange abandonedness of the outskirts of Vegas, where the desert infringes upon the houses in an ominous sort of way, threatening to swallow them up, halfway there already. Everything looks like a ghost town, but one that’s never been lived in. It’s almost apocalyptic, and there’s no one at all about, and it feels so fucking lonely.  
  


  
V  
_Shane_

He can’t deny the feeling of elation that rushes through him, after he and Ryan hang up. It’s followed quickly by the impracticality of the whole thing and more anxiety, perhaps, than the situation calls for, and he shoots off a quick text, cursing at typos, when he tells Ryan to be careful driving. And then another, calmer, saying he’ll be waiting.  
  
There’s another problem, too. Now, he really does have to face up to why he’s been stalling so long, why he’s been avoiding flying back to L.A. He knows it’s the same reason he went to New York in the first place. Shane doesn’t want to always just be the co-host, the sound guy, the person people come to in emergencies. He wants something that is his — his own. Ruining History is sort of that something, of course, and he has all these notes, carefully organized on his laptop in separate folders, but to be honest, he hasn’t really worked on any of them while he’s been in New York, either. Like all things Shane likes it is a niche, and a little odd, and not something that draws views the way that other shows on BuzzFeed do. And, not only that but, in some ways, it is still coasting on the success of Unsolved.  
  
But in the end, it’s not really any of that. And he doesn’t know exactly when his whole life started to be infiltrated by Ryan.  
  
He also doesn’t understand how he hadn’t noticed, until he was heart-deep in the mire.  
  
Acknowledging that Ryan has a magnetic kind of pull is one thing. Admitting to the fact that Ryan made Shane feel something when they were together in L.A. — feel something pretty intensely — is entirely different. It’s separate from everything Shane knows, and it’s scary. It’s a hell of a lot scarier, still, to admit that his own life has started to revolve around Ryan completely. Like he really is the sun itself.  
  
That was heliocentrism for you.  
  
And Shane isn’t certain he wants to be attached to anyone like that.  
  
So, fine, this wasn’t about taking opportunities at all. Really, he’d thought that removing himself from Ryan would create a new trajectory for himself. One where he was once again unattached to anything else, unhindered, even. But all New York had given him was a long, drawn out feeling of emptiness that made him start to wonder about the very nature of his own soul, and whether he knows himself at all. Why is he running away, still? Why can’t he just choose Ryan the way Ryan seems so willing, so ready to choose him?  
  
So instead of facing up to anything, he’s come back to Illinois. Like maybe he can find something here, in the flotsam and jetsam of his childhood and the simple patterns of family life which echoes what he remembers, even if it’s not exactly the same — it’s useless to fight against the currents of time — and it has helped, some, but he still feels like he’s… like he’s lost himself a little, somewhere along the way.  
  
He feels a little bit like Ryan will make it here, to Illinois, only to finally find something in Shane that is far too much like all the ghosts he’s ever searched for. And Shane wonders if he himself will actually be surprised to find that he can’t touch things anymore, even if he reaches out, or if he will realize he was expecting this all along. What if he doesn’t connect? What if his fingers, his hands, his too-tall, ridiculous human body just passes right through the rest of his life without ever connecting to anything at all? What if he never feels anything else again, with the same intensity he did when he was with Ryan?  
  
It’s a sobering thought. But at the same time, Shane knows that if he can’t connect, then he’s safe, in a way. He also knows, reaching deep into the still, black pool of himself — the one he doesn’t like to stir too much — that he has to eventually face up to the question he doesn’t want to ask himself, which is: is he drawn to Ryan because he is light itself; because his juxtaposition to Shane’s dark creates something he might be able to call special…?  
  
…Or is he drawn to him just because he wants to try and touch the sun to test everything he knows? Or fears? Just to see if Ryan alone has the power to burn him up, or not. Maybe, like Icarus, the sun he seeks in Ryan will eventually destroy him — throw him into the dark waters of his own unfeeling to drown. It’s cowardly, he knows that, but at least he will still have felt that searing hurt that comes from the end of all beloved things before he goes under.  
  
Either way, Shane knows that he just really wants to fucking feel something again. The way he did with Ryan. The problem is that he’d thought, once — curled around Ryan’s warm, naked back in a hotel somewhere in Missouri — that he’d found a place he belonged, but now, after so many months away, he doesn’t know anymore.  
  
But still, Ryan is on his way. The thing has been sent in motion, and there is a part of himself — a little traitorously, Shane thinks — that tells him that there is nothing he can do about it now.


	4. VI-VIII

VI  
_Ryan_

Here’s the thing about driving halfway across the country to see someone. You can’t really deny, after that, that you’re pretty much head over heels for them. That, or you want to torture yourself, but Ryan’s pretty sure it’s the former.  
  
Not that Ryan has tried to deny how he feels about Shane. Not for a while now. It’s just that when he finally drops his bookbag onto the extra bed in some shitty motel room in Utah and looks around the room in that hideous orangey light, that it really hits him. He’d been driving for about twelve hours. His legs feel like fucking Jell-O, and not in a good way. But still, he tells himself as he contemplates showering and then thinks _fuck it_ dropping to sit on the end of the other bed, he’s making progress. And in more than just miles.  
  
Somewhere in Nevada it occurred to him that there was no way that he and Shane were going to be able to make this journey back — _if_ Shane decides to come back — without murdering one another if they have to somehow sleep in Ryan’s Prius. There’s no way _Ryan_ is going to make it to Illinois, and back to Los Angeles without murdering _someone_ if _he_ has to sleep in his Prius, which he will, because he can’t afford over a week of motel rooms.  
  
After this realization, he called Jake. Jake was usually the one that knew what to do in a crisis, and for once, Ryan is deeply thankful for Jake’s serene, almost blasé attitude in the face of — well — most things, because he didn’t freak out about the fact that Ryan, without much explanation, was planning on this kind of lunatic impromptu drive across the country.  
  
Ryan got lunch somewhere in a pervasively beige diner which was perfectly complimented by the pervasively brown landscape outside, while Jake called around and, three hours later (although he’d had to backtrack a little) Ryan’s somehow ended up with the good fortune of Jake having med-student friends in Nevada with an old Ford E-150 — a cargo van, complete with all sorts of things, including an air mattress, piles of blankets, and even a little one-pot burner and kettle. It was basically a trade-off. Ryan left his car there _Please, Jesus, be careful with it_ , he'd said, unhooking the Prius’s fob from his key-ring, and then he’d left with that fucking Ford monster.  
  
He spends the next six hours trying very hard not to die, because he’s never driven a car so huge and it is pretty much the worst thing he’s ever done. At least it isn’t a stick shift.  
  
The next morning, he drags himself out of the motel and into the parking lot much later than he would have liked. He’s overslept, and he is already behind schedule thanks to his own poor planning, but as he catches a look at that monster surrounded by other, much smaller cars, he is struck by hilarity. He takes a picture of it on his phone and then climbs into the driver’s seat before typing out a text and sending it to Shane.  
  
<Hey, so I hope you’re still serious about this because> he sends, followed by the picture of the van.  
  
<JESUS CHRIST> Shane types back.  
  
<I’ve named it Frodo> Ryan tells him. <It’s for there and back again.>  
  
<What is it with you and naming things?> Shane asks. <Whatever happened to your salamander twin anyway?>  
  
<You mean Cedric?> Ryan asks. <He’s good>  
  
<Also, there and back again is Bilbo, you illiterate>  
  
<Whatever, its name is Frodo. It responds to it already>  
  
It is a little less harrowing driving the erroneously named ’Frodo’ the following day, but not by much. By evening, he is in Colorado, and when he lets Shane know, he gets that skiing giraffe Vine in response. He is sitting in the back of the van in one of the few parks that are still open for campers and camping this late in the year, doors open to the twilight. He’s seen the Vine before, but now, his face lit by the faintly blue light ( _Say ‘Colorado!’_ ) he laughs harder at it than he had before, giddy with excitement, and then gets up to set up the van for the night.  
  
Ryan remembers abruptly, and with force, how much he _hates_ camping.  
  
Still, the mattress is self-inflating and, he thinks, not the worst place he’s slept, as he huddles down under wool and fleece and tries not to think about how silent it is, or how dark. He spends some time on his phone, trying to push thoughts of the Zodiac Killer out of his head (and whatever other campfire stories he’s heard about people sitting in cars late at night). He hopes he’ll survive until morning.  
  
He falls asleep thinking about Shane and about how long it’s been since he’s fallen asleep to the sound of his breathing — whether in a haunted place or in one of their beds — and he thinks about how much he wants that again. He wonders how different things will be when he finally gets to Illinois. He wonders if, in all of their admissions of wanting to see one another, if they have completely different ideas about how it will go. If Shane will still want to kiss him, if he will still stand behind him in the bathroom while he brushes his teeth and press his face into Ryan’s hair, spread his hand warmly over Ryan’s lower belly beneath his shirt. Or if he will just want to go back to the way things were, before… all of this. He wonders if they will be closer than they were, or further apart, or just the same. If sleeping a foot or so away in haunted places will suddenly become awkward, if they will stop sharing a bed. And Ryan wonders if he is really just coming out here to try to coerce Shane into coming back to L.A. with him, even though he said he wasn’t.  
  
Even if that had been Ryan’s initial intent, he promises himself now that he won’t. That even though he’s made his decision: to cross this distance to prove… something, Shane doesn’t have to make his, and it doesn’t mean he will be indecisive forever. And if he says no… then Ryan will just have to be okay with that. That he will have to be prepared for it. Ultimately, at the very heart of things, they have always supported one another. Ryan isn’t about to fuck that up, now, even if he doesn’t get what he longs so desperately for.  
  


  
VII  
_Shane_

According to physics, waiting a few days for Ryan to drive across country to Illinois should feel shorter than the months that have passed without him. Somehow, it doesn’t, and Shane, who doesn’t believe that time is an illusion, knows that that is ridiculous. He knows that the sun reaches its peak in the sky at the same time, that shadows shorten and lengthen in time with the earth’s steady revolutions, and that the succession of night and day is the same as it’s always been, and yet everything feels like it takes longer than ever, now. Time warps around him in way he’s never really known before. Everything he does to pass this waiting time seems to take only moments. Showers are over before he knows it, and he’s left standing beneath the hot water steadily getting colder, with his mind miles away. He’s living moment to moment, clinging to routine. Morning coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, morning coffee… He goes for walks that don’t help much, he rakes the fallen leaves up from the yard, he tries to read, but cannot focus. He and Finn hold some epic movie marathons rivalling only Christmases and Thanksgivings of childhoods past. The universe behaves as it always has, and the laws of physics have not changed, but something deep inside him hums away with an insistence that is impossible to ignore. It feels like something about to happen, a constant underlying tension. It’s not pleasant. He wants Ryan to arrive just so it will stop, but he doesn’t know what he’ll feel, either, when this thing finally shudders loose.  
  
And Ryan is in Utah, then Colorado, then Nebraska. It’s been three days since he told Shane he was going to come all the way out here. Shane is never far from his phone. His heart skips every time it vibrates until he has to turn off notifications for _everything_ except his texts just to give himself a break.  
  
They’re eating supper when his phone buzzes. It’s on the coffee table in the living room, but he can hear it from where he sits and he freezes momentarily, glancing over, then goes back to his food. It was just a text, but he can feel Finn’s eyes on him, waiting to see how long Shane’s going to be able to hold out. It takes a few more seconds, but Shane finally thinks _fuck it_ and says “Sorry,” and pushes his chair back.  
  
“Girlfriend,” Finn says to their parents, and Shane knows he’s joking, but feels his face heat up a little all the same. It’s dark in the living room, but the light from the kitchen where the rest of his family is allows him to see well enough. The text is from Ryan — somehow, he’d known it.

<Made it to Nevada. If I never have to look at another field or a desert again I’ll die happy>  
  
<Congratulations little guy, we’re in the same time zone!> Shane texts back.  
  
<Oh yeah!>  
  
<How’s it going?> Shane would be lying if he said he wasn’t worried about Ryan driving alone for so long. He knows he’s pulling long hours because of the progress he’s making, and Shane feels like he knows the names of more cities between here and California than he’s ever needed to know because he’s looked at the map so many times, trying to make the endless hours and days between without-Ryan and seeing-Ryan make some semblance of sense to no avail.  
  
Ryan’s next text takes a while to come in. <Good good. I’m gonna try to sleep now, then start early tomorrow>  
  
<And then it’s just one more state> Shane types.  
  
<That’s so fucking crazy. One more state> and then <Are you ready for this?>  
  
Suddenly Shane’s hands are shaking. Someone tells him his food’s going to get cold, and he says something like “yeah,” or “okay,” but he hardly hears himself, fingers suspended over his phone while he tries to think of how to respond.  
  
In the end, he writes <Baby I’m always ready> because he thinks it will make Ryan laugh and because maybe it will dissolve the tension, and because it’s Ryan who’s driving all this time, and not him and he doesn’t feel like now is the time to be discouraging by being honest.  
  
But then, even Shane doesn’t know what’s honest. He wants to see Ryan so badly it’s like the very blood in his veins is only pulsing to count out the seconds that remain before he can see him. Touch him. At the same time, he’s so, so terrified and he doesn’t even know why.

 

 

VIII  
_Ryan_

At some point, Ryan’s stopped caring about the scenery. It was probably a few states ago — all that desert — but now he’s hardly seeing it at all. In a few weeks, if someone asked him what he remembered about Iowa it would be literally nothing. _Sorry, Iowa._ He thinks.  
  
Ryan makes it to Illinois the next evening, around suppertime. He hasn’t eaten for almost eight hours, and he’s been driving for ten. He bypasses Davenport and uses his phone to find a motel in Moline because it’s a little bit cheaper, and he desperately wants to shower and do anything other than sit in this fucking van. He’s sore. He feels it in every part of himself as he checks into a room. It’s only three more hours to Schaumburg, but even if he musters up the energy it takes to make it there, it’ll be past nine p.m. The best he’ll be able to do is check into another motel there and arrange to meet Shane the next morning, so it’s all the same, really.  
  
He really does think about it, though, but in the end, he’s been driving for three days straight and he’s fucking exhausted. He managers to shower, and that eases the soreness in his muscles a little. He doesn’t mean to crash, but he does, and wakes up to his phone buzzing in the pocket of his jeans where he’s left them on the floor.  
  
He extracts it with difficulty and it takes a second for him to realize it’s not just texts because there’s a few of them waiting for him, but he can’t read them without his glasses. He answers on the ninth or tenth ring.  
  
“Heyyy, Ryan. Good to know you’re not dead,” Shane says, when Ryan groggily answers.  
  
“Oh no, what time is it?” Ryan asks. He’s been checking in with Shane by seven or eight o’clock each night by some unspoken rule — Shane wanting to know he’s still doing okay, with all that driving.  
  
“It’s past ten,” Shane says, and there’s something soft to his voice that means he’s regathering himself.  
  
“Oh, goddammit. Sorry,” Ryan says. “I fell asleep. I’m at a motel already.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“Moline.”  
  
“Hey,” Shane says, and his voice goes bright. “Look at you, you’re in Illinois. You’re almost here.”  
  
“Yeah, I can see you tomorrow… Fuck that’s so crazy.”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says. “Sure is.”  
  
“Still ready?”  
  
“Definitely,” Shane tells him.  
  
Ryan laughs. “I’m like… only three hours away. Fuck I feel stupid stopping here, now.”  
  
“No, I understand,” Shane says, and he’s all sarcasm, giving Ryan a hard time. “You say you want to see me, but you give up when you’re only three hours away—”  
  
“Shut up,” Ryan tells him, laughing.  
  
“I’d say you’re having second thoughts, Ryan—”  
  
“Am not,”  
  
“Hm, no, I think you are,” Shane says, and Ryan wants to see him so bad.  
  
“Fuck you,” Ryan says, and hears Shane laugh softly on the other end.  
  
“Okay. You should sleep,” Shane tells him.  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan answers. “I— how should we do this tomorrow?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean should I just come there?”  
  
“Yeah, I guess so.”  
  
“When?”  
  
“Whenever. I’ll be here.”  
  
“Okay,” Ryan says, softer. “So, I’ll text you.”  
  
“Sounds good.”  
  
“Okay,” Ryan says. “I’m going to _try_ to leave here around seven. No promises though, I suck at getting up early—”  
  
“Yeah, that’s cool,” Shane says. “Take your time, sleep, whatever.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan says.  
  
“You know,” Shane begins, his voice soft and strange, but then stops. Ryan waits, but nothing’s forthcoming.  
  
“How are things with you?” Ryan asks, voice softer to match Shane’s.  
  
“Good,” Shane says. “I’m— it’ll be good to not be waiting.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan breathes. “Yeah, that’s for sure.”  
  
“I…” Shane takes a breath. Ryan can practically hear the gears in Shane’s head change direction. “Okay. You get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”  
  
“Okay, yeah.” Ryan laughs, half-giddy. “See you tomorrow.”  
  
They hang up, and Ryan finds his glasses and goes through his texts. One or two are from other people — Zach wants to know if he’s still sick. He’s surprised his manager’s still buying that story, because he’s starting to get the feeling that Zach, and a few others in the office know something else is up. The other texts are from Shane, starting around the time Ryan usually texts him.  
  
<Hey where are you now?>

<Are you still in Iowa?>

<Ryan, did you get abducted?>

<Bergara>  
  
And then finally the phone call. Shit… Ryan suddenly feels even more awful that he worried him. Staring at Shane’s texts, he touches his mouth, then pushes his fingers through his hair. It’s dried all fucked up since he slept on it wet. He sends his own text back.  
  
<Okay. What if I left now?>  
  
The dots before Shane’s text come up quickly.  
  
<You okay to do it?>  
  
<Yeah, I had that nap.>  
  
Ryan watches the dots come up again, but it’s barely a second before:  
  
<Do it.>  
  
So he does. Exhaustion gone, replaced with adrenaline and excitement, he grabs all his things, pulls on his last clean pair of jeans and a clean t-shirt, and finally a beanie to cover his stupid hair and goes back to the front desk. They can’t refund him, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. He’s finally going to get to see Shane.


	5. IX-XII

IX  
_Shane_

Time really has become completely fucked. Waiting three days felt like a long time but, Shane realizes now, it’s nothing compared to the three hours it will take Ryan to drive here from Moline.  
  
He ventures out of his room a little wild-eyed and seeks out another human being in the hopes of maintaining his sanity for that length of time. He finds his mother sitting at the kitchen table with the crossword from the newspaper. She glances up and him as he sits across from her and breathes a laugh. “You look like you’ve been through the wringer.”  
  
“Yeah, maybe a few times,” Shane tells her.  
  
He watches her as she pens another word into the boxes. She’s always done the crosswords in pen. Shane wishes he had the patience for them. He’d tried, in his early twenties, but eventually accepted the fact that he was never going to be a crossword person.  
  
“Hey, you remember Ryan,” he says, like Ryan is some childhood friend he used to have. Like she doesn’t watched Unsolved every week. She looks up at him over her glasses, eyebrows raised.  
  
“I don’t think I recall anyone named Ryan,” she says, and for a moment Shane understands the frustration that Ryan must feel under the torrent of Shane’s own sarcasm.  
  
“He’s coming here. Uh. I guess.”  
  
“He’s coming _here_?” she asks, and Shane nods. “When?”  
  
“Ohh… a few hours.” he says, like friends regularly drop by after midnight.  
  
She makes a face like _all right, then_ and goes back to the crossword for a second. “Well, you remember where the spare blankets are. And I hope he doesn’t mind leftovers, no one’s gone for groceries.”  
  
Shane scratches at the back of his neck and mumbles something that might be an affirmative. She pushes the newspaper away. “I need a cigarette,” she tells him. “Do you want to come out?”  
  
It’s a relief. They go out to the iron fire pit in the backyard and set it burning, sitting beside it in folding lawn chairs. He’s calmer, now. He’s always been calmer outside, in the evening. Always more at home, here, in the dark, cool autumn nights of Illinois, than he’s ever felt in L.A., and yet… even this doesn’t feel quite as comforting as he needs it to be. It’s different from the homey feeling he remembers. Still, he supposes, it’s close enough. Maybe that’s just a part of getting older — losing that feeling.  
  
Time ticks along. Just after midnight, after Shane’s heart’s started racing again in a way that makes him feel vaguely panicky, she gets up and asks him if he’s coming back inside. “No, I’m gonna… I’ll wait for him.”  
  
“Okay.” She tells him to make sure the fire’s out before he goes to bed. It’s a familiar reminder and he nods as she squeezes his shoulder on the way back in. After the door shuts behind her, after the lights in the kitchen flicker off, Shane stays in the back yard, leaning forward into the fire’s warmth, hands clasped tighter and tighter between his knees as he listens for a car.  
  
He hears a few pass by, sounding vaguely like the waves from the ocean on the California surf. He feels like he’s left his life scattered all over. He wonders why he can’t be anywhere without missing somewhere else. In L.A., he felt lonely in his apartment. He missed Illinois. And now, he’s here, and he misses his apartment in Los Angeles. He misses the peculiar chill of west-coast mornings melting into the heat of the day. He misses Ryan. Every time a car passes, he catches his breath.  
  
It’s seven minutes past one when there is, finally, the sound of a car door closing somewhere up on the street, and Shane, feeling like he’s not even in complete control of his own body, stands up and walks quickly around to the front of the house.  
  
Even in the steetlight-dim, he is still unmistakable. Shane’s been in enough dark places with Ryan to know his silhouette anywhere. Ryan steps from the street into Shane’s driveway, and for a moment there is a sudden skipping uncertainty to his step, sneakers scraping against the pavement as he stops, looking up at the house like he isn’t completely sure he can do it, or like he isn’t sure if he should ring the bell this late. Like maybe this is scarier than any of the haunted places he’s been to.  
  
Shane is still in shadow and Ryan hasn’t seen him. Shane watches him pull out his cell phone, the blue glow illuminating Ryan’s face, the shadows of his cheekbones, his dark eyes. And Shane’s holding his breath. He knows who Ryan’s texting and so pulls his own phone from his pocket quietly, waiting. It’s on silent, but it vibrates in his hand and Ryan looks over when it lights up Shane’s face from below in the darkness. Shane watches him tense and jump back — knows he must make a spooky figure in the shadows. Ryan lets out a little yell and Shane dissolves into laughter.  
  
“Shane, _Jesus Christ, Shane_ ,” Ryan’s saying as Shane pockets his phone and moves towards Ryan, stepping into the light from the street lamps. He can’t stop laughing. It’s so overwhelming — all the tension in him has finally come to a head and it starts to ease, finally, _finally_ , now that Ryan is here. It’s almost too much. Shane practically doubles over in the driveway, his laughter ringing out through the cool night, and then, after a moment, Ryan’s joins in.  
  
“You fucking dick, I seriously almost shit myself,” Ryan’s saying as Shane straightens, just in time for Ryan to reach out and shove Shane in the chest. Shane takes a step back, regaining his balance, and then he surges forward, pulling Ryan into his chest a little desperately, messily, and holds onto him _tight_. He presses his face against the soft fabric of Ryan’s hat, breathes him in, and Ryan makes a muffled sound, his breath warm through Shane’s button-down. For a moment, everything feels right.  
  
Then Ryan slides his hands beneath Shane’s shirt and presses them against the heat of his back. Shane feels the scrape of his fingernails as he holds on hard, the uncomfortable hard press of Ryan’s cell phone digging into his spine, but it’s how cold his fingers are that makes Shane jump and cry out. He tries to push him playfully away, but Ryan’s fixed on revenge for being scared by Shane _again_ , it seems, and they wrestle a moment until they’re both gasping with quiet laughter, still vaguely aware they’re outside in the middle of the night. Ryan drops his phone onto the driveway and laughs “Oh shit,” and they stumble a little. Shane does his best not to step on it and they overbalance and end up staggering into his parents’ car in the driveway, Ryan’s back pressed against it, Shane pressed against him.  
  
They catch one another’s eyes, breathing hard. Ryan’s hand is on Shane’s hip and, swallowing, Shane makes himself step carefully away. He gathers Ryan’s hands up in both of his and brings them to his own mouth, breathing warmth into his fingers and Ryan’s looking at him in this way — wanting and startled and the laughter not quite faded from his eyes — and Shane knows he will never fucking forget it, not for the rest of his life.  
  
“Come on,” he says, and his lips brush Ryan’s knuckles. He pulls back, tries to pull away, but Ryan’s fingers tighten around his own. It’s awkward, a little tangled, so Shane shifts and curls his fingers around Ryan’s palm. He stoops down and picks up Ryan’s phone from the driveway and then, in silence, tugs him along to the back of the house where the fire is still burning.    
  
“Sit,” he says, holding out his phone, and Ryan lets go of his hand to take it. They settle in the lawn chairs across from one another, can’t stop looking at each other. The moment lasts for handful of seconds but, finally, Shane breaks. He looks away first, breathing a soft laugh.  
  
“I can’t believe I made it,” Ryan admits and Shane looks back, smiling at him softly.  
  
“But y’did.”  
  


X  
_Shane_

It is so easy to just slide back into how things should be, Shane thinks. He thinks that, maybe, it really shouldn’t be, and that this is just the calm before he’s just battered by whatever comes next, and that worry hums away quietly in the background of his thoughts, but it’s easy to push it aside, into some shadowy corner, as he talks to Ryan. Ryan here and now and with _him_ in Illinois. It’s all a little surreal.  
  
Sometimes, there is something about being with Ryan that quiets even Shane’s constantly-running mind. It’s not a silencing, but rather a slowing and a quieting to his thoughts that, in New York, he tried unsuccessfully to replicate with sleep, and drinking, and bar-noise. He’d tried, too, to find it in other things and other places before they met, but still, Shane has only ever truly found it in Ryan.  
  
It was the having it and then losing it that was the hardest. He searches for it now, too, listening to Ryan talk about the drive, about the things that happened on the way, about how much he hates camping — surface things, but Shane can’t quite get back there to that quiet place. He doesn’t let himself dwell on it too much. Instead, he berates himself a little. Ryan’s been here for no more than an hour, and he’s already looking for something _from_ him.  
  
Eventually, Shane notices that Ryan’s shivering a little, the sleeves of his sweater pulled down over his fingers for the fifth or sixth time. The fire’s burning low, and he straightens his legs out, knees popping, and leans forward a little. “You cold?” he asks, and Ryan breaths a laugh and says ‘yeah, a bit,’ and Shane shakes his head at him as though he’s greatly disappointed and stands to put the fire out. “You kids from California.”  
  
Ryan’s quiet as soon as they go inside. He looks like he feels out of place, and Shane still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he’s really _here_ and for a moment they just stand together in the darkened kitchen, while Shane tries to think of what to do with him. There _are_ spare blankets in the hall cupboard, and the couch in the basement really isn’t half bad to sleep on, but…  
  
Shane thinks about touching the back of Ryan’s neck, where his hair is falling messily from under his beanie, but he doesn’t. “Come on, unless you want to sleep in the basement. It’s pretty dark down there.”  
  
“I do _not_ want to sleep in the basement, you probably murder people down there.”  
  
“ _I_ do?” Shane asks as he leads the way. “Why do you always think I’m a murderer?”  
  
“You’re the one that lives in a creepy house in Illinois.”  
  
“My house isn’t creepy.” They’re whispering now, as they make their way upstairs, Ryan right on his heels. The wood creaks softly beneath their feet.  
  
“Well, it is pretty dark. Kinda like I would expect a murder house to be.”  
  
“Well, it’s _night time_ , Ryan,” Shane tells him, and pushes the door to his bedroom open. Inside, Shane crosses the room to flick on the bedside lamp and murmurs “Shut the door.” Ryan does and, turning back to him, Shane realizes that it’s a little… not strange, but sort of funny to have Ryan in his old bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed and their eyes meet. They laugh a little, and Shane can see that Ryan feels it, too.  
  
Keeping his voice soft, Ryan says, “Please tell me your room wasn’t this empty when you were a kid. Because then you’re _definitely_ a murderer."  
  


XI  
_Ryan_

Shane laughs and Ryan grins.  
  
“Yeah, it’s been sort of excavated since I was a kid,” Shane’s saying, softly. “A lot of my stuff got donated or sold or given to my cousins, you know.” Ryan’s wandering vaguely, making a wide circle around the bed, but he can feel Shane’s eyes on him. “All the posters I think were thrown away when we repainted, and it’s a new bed, ‘cause I didn’t fit the old one… Oh, but look.”  
  
Shane goes to the closet and pulls out a hard black case which he drops onto the bed as he sits again, and Ryan laughs when he opens it to reveal a trumpet.  
  
“Oh my _God,_ ” Ryan wheezes and Shane breathes a laugh. “You’re such a nerd. You’re like a band geek.”  
  
“Nah,” Shane says, and then. “Well, yeah, maybe.”  
  
“When was the last time you played this?”  
  
“Oh damn, I don’t even remember,” he says as he closes the case back up and sets it on the floor. "If I blew it, dust would probably fly out.”  
  
Ryan laughs softly, fingers brushing part of Shane’s old dresser where the fake-wood edge is peeling away from the particle board beneath. Shane sort of cocks his head at him, Ryan can see it out of his peripheral vision and after a second or two he relents, and looks over. Their eyes meet.  
  
“It’s nice to see you,” Shane says, waves a hand between them vaguely before he braces it again on the bed. “Like, really see you. Corporeally.”  
  
“Corporeally,” Ryan repeats, laughing a little, and then, suddenly more serious, says “I got so freaked out driving here. I thought maybe I was pushing this too far. Like I shouldn’t come—”  
  
Shane shakes his head. “I’m glad you came. I hope—” he looks away, down at the carpet beneath his feet. Ryan watches him clench one hand just for a second, then release it, flexing long fingers against the outside of his thigh, and the silence stretches until Ryan can’t take it, and finally asks, softly, “What?”  
  
Shane sighs and shakes his head a little as he looks up at Ryan again. “I hope you don’t regret it.”  
  
“Why would I regret it?” Ryan asks.  
  
Shane shrugs and looks away. “I don’t know. Money, maybe. You still have to drive back.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan says, not liking that. 'You _still have to drive back.'_ But, he reminds himself, he knew this. He knew this might happen. “But I don’t regret it yet.”  
  
He’s rewarded with the smallest smile from Shane, gone before it’s really started, but he’s not holding Ryan’s eyes anymore.  
  
“Man, it’s fucking _cold_ here,” Ryan says, because it’s true, but also just to cut this _atmosphere_ that’s coming up between them again. It feels a lot like it did when they were still miles apart.  
  
“Yeah, still?” Shane asks. He stands up and drags the covers down and says “Come on, then.”  
  
Ryan takes off his hat and his glasses, and places them on the bedside table, and runs his fingers self-consciously through his hair. Shane’s just watching him, and the moment winds itself so tight that Ryan feels like it will break any second, and he’s shaking from more than just cold, but then Shane murmurs something about taking out his contacts and circles him carefully before he disappears into the hallway, leaving Ryan to his own devices.  
  
He can’t just stand there and shiver, so he removes his hoodie, and his shoes and socks and jeans, and climbs beneath the covers in only a t-shirt and underwear. When Shane returns, shutting the door again, he laughs a little at Ryan huddled in his bed. “You do look cold,” he tells him and, like it’s nothing, he strips down as much as Ryan has, and slides into bed with him for the first time in months and months, finding that all the spaces that they used to fit together are still there. It only takes moments, both of them facing one another, Shane’s arm slung over Ryan’s waist, Ryan’s thigh between Shane’s, pressed close. Ryan tucks his head down into Shane’s chest and breathes him in. And he thinks about how Shane’s legs and arms really are ridiculously too long, as Shane reaches over him — almost without shifting forward — and flicks off the light.  
  
Silence falls between them, and it’s not an awkward one, but Shane’s holding himself a little rigid, and Ryan can feel it in the tightness of his shoulders and the tense and relax of Shane’s thigh against his as he shifts against him, ever so slightly. Ryan’s knuckles brush over Shane’s stomach, unfurling his fingers against Shane’s skin, but then he moves, wraps his arm around Shane’s waist instead, and presses his palm over the other man’s lower back. When he settles again, he feels Shane take a deep breath then finally, finally relax. He wraps Ryan tighter, his forearm pressing warmly against Ryan’s spine through the thin cotton of his shirt, sliding his fingers into Ryan’s hair, absently stroking it where it’s soft at the nape of his neck.  
  
They’re pressed closer than they usually are, to sleep. In Los Angeles, sometimes they would sleep without really touching at all, but this— it was like they were both half-starved for it.  
  
Shane’s fingers keep moving softly over his hair, even when he shifts so his mouth brushes Ryan’s temple. “I missed this,” he whispers.  
  
“ _Just_ this?” Ryan asks.  
  
Shane chuckles softly, but neither of them move to change anything about this closeness.  


  
XII  
_Shane_

Shane lies awake for a long time after Ryan drops off, which is almost immediately. Shane doesn’t blame him, after all that driving. He doesn’t pull away even when his lower back starts to feel tight, his body twisted a little awkwardly against the mattress.  
  
He thinks that he should have thought harder about this, instead of just acting on impulse. And now, he’d let Ryan drive all the way out here, drive for nearly four days, across the fucking country, just to _see_ him. Just for Shane to disappoint him… Because he doesn’t know if he can go back to L.A., doesn’t know if he’s ready, yet.  
  
Or if he ever will be.  
  
He starts to feel like this was a rash decision — or rather, he finally admits to himself that it was — but still, he never moves away from Ryan. He still wants this moment with everything he has. He falls asleep just before the sky begins to get light.

 

  
XIII  
_Ryan_

Ryan wakes up first. Downstairs there is the sound of dishes clinking, and a low monotone interspersed with music that must be the news, and beside him, Shane is softly snoring. They’ve moved away from one another in the night, and Ryan turns his face against the pillow, trying to hold onto sleep a little longer, but it’s not much use. He finally opens his eyes to squint at Shane’s room. Autumn sunlight is spilling in through the window, and Shane’s stretched out on his stomach beside him, his pillow shoved up to the headboard and his face hidden by one arm to keep the light out.  
  
He doesn’t wake up at all when Ryan shifts. The room looks different in the daylight, with the sun making its way across the cream-coloured walls. It looks a little less lonely than it did when it was mostly shadows. With the noises downstairs, Ryan is reminded that other people do exist in the world and, while it didn’t bother him so much last night, now he finds that he is ridiculously anxious. It’s not that he doesn’t know Finn, he comes out drinking with them, sometimes, and has tagged along on a few, more sober daytime adventures. It’s not even that he’s so nervous about meeting new people, just this time, it’s Shane’s parents and he’s slept in their son’s room, in his bed, not to mention half the other things they’ve done in different beds in different bedrooms, and suddenly Ryan’s not at all sure how he’s supposed to handle this.  
  
“You all right?” Shane asks, and Ryan almost jumps a little. One of Shane’s brown eyes is peering at him from above his freckled arm. “I can practically see the cogs turning in that anxious little brain of yours.”  
  
Ryan laughs a little. “I guess I’m nervous.”  
  
“About?” Shane asks, pushing himself up a little and grabbing the pillow back from where he’s shoved it away, pulling it under his head again. He turns his eyes back to Ryan.  
  
“About… your parents, maybe. Do they know I’m here?”  
  
“I’m sure they can see your giant van parked on the street.”  
  
“I mean, do they know I’m _here_?”  
  
Shane shrugs a little. “I guess they will, now. What is it, Ryan?” he asks, and there’s something low and steady in his voice that tells Ryan that Shane _knows_ , he just wants Ryan to say it.  
  
“Have you talked to them about—”  
  
“I try to keep my parents out of my sex life,” Shane says. “But they’ll probably figure it out, I mean… unless you’re not okay with that.”  
  
“I don’t know what… I mean.” Ryan rolls onto his back, and he’s not looking at Shane anymore. “Won’t they think we’re together?”  
  
“Maybe. I don’t know if they’ll care very much one way or another, to be honest, Ry… If you’re not okay with them thinking you’re gay or bi or whatever, then we can… I dunno, tell them one of us took the floor or something. They’re not going to give you an inquisition, they’re not like that,” Shane says.  
  
“Yeah… But they know you’re not straight…?” Ryan ventures.  
  
“I mean, yeah, they’ve figured it out by now,” says Shane. “It was never… if it came up, it just came up and they… you know… I don’t think anyone was particularly shocked.”  
   
Ryan laughs a little, softly, “Holy shit, really?”  
  
“Why? You’re never gonna tell your family?” Shane asks.  
  
They’ve never talked about this before, and Ryan wonders why they’re covering it here, now, and not before, when whatever they were felt a little bit more like Together than this does. He’s not sure what this feels like, but he knows that he hasn’t seen Shane in nearly seven months, and they didn’t exactly have a passionate night, despite their long sought-after reunion. Or at least, it was sought after on his part.  
  
“I…” Ryan furrows his brow and thinks about it. “I guess I would. Or maybe I wouldn’t… I don’t know. Honestly, I really don’t know how they’d take it.”  
  
“Just don’t tell your parents I was the one who corrupted you,” Shane tells him, rolling onto his back as well, their arms brushing.  
  
“ _Corrupted_ me?” Ryan snorts, looking over.  
  
“Yeah,” Shane tells him. “I think your dad could beat me up.”  
  
Ryan bursts out laughing and Shane grins at the ceiling.  
  
For a moment, everything’s nice, but then Shane pushes himself up to sitting and Ryan feels the loss of that warmth beside him.  
  
“Have you figured that out, yet?” Shane asks Ryan.  
  
“What?” Ryan asks.  
  
“What you are. What you want to call yourself, or whatever.”  
  
“Was I supposed to?” Ryan asks. “You haven’t.”  
  
“I have, I just don’t feel the need to call it anything.”  
  
Ryan licks his lips and turns his eyes away. He can feel Shane’s gaze on him. “I... I like women. Like, I’ve never been unhappy with women. And, I dunno, I can see _why_ guys are attractive, you get what I’m saying?” He finds himself laughing a little, even before before the words are out because Shane’s nodding like _duh, Ryan_.  
  
“Well, yeah, Ryan, obviously I do,” Shane says, and Ryan giggles a little. “I like girls, and I like you. How’s that?” Ryan asks. And he watches Shane look over his face once, quickly, like trying to catch a lie, and Ryan holds his gaze for that moment. “I guess that’s bisexual,” Ryan adds, finally. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. The word washes over him like water, and it feels so much better than straight or gay, or just living within the the strange nameless nuance of sexuality that Shane feels comfortable embodying, but Ryan never could. He takes a breath. “Yeah, that feels right.”  
  
Shane smiles at him, and then looks away. “I’m proud of you, buddy.”  
  
“Yeah yeah,” says Ryan, like it doesn’t matter, but secretly pleased. “Does that make _you_ feel better?” he asks. “I bet you thought I was gonna just… ditch you after I realized I was still straight or whatever.”  
  
“I didn’t think that.”  
  
“Yeah you did,” Ryan tells him.  
  
“Well. Maybe,”  Shane admits, a little laconically.  
  
“Well. I’m not.” Ryan mimics his tone.  
  
Shane sighs and says softly, seriously, “I know.”  
  
They wait until the house goes quiet, both his parents off to work, and Finn who-knows-where, and then they both make their way downstairs in search of coffee. Ryan watches Shane make it, watches him move easily around this, to Ryan, unfamiliar space, and he wonders what’s happening between them, because the way Shane had looked at him last night — taken his hands and warmed them with his breath — the way they’d curled up together in bed, like they used to — it just doesn’t match up with how they haven’t kissed, haven’t touched, unless Ryan counts the way that Shane— that _Shane_ pulled him into his arms in his driveway under stars half-hidden from light-pollution and Ryan realizes that _he’s_ been the one to not offer anything. He’s been the one to not initiate, and so maybe Shane’s just respecting that.  
  
Or maybe this desperate, wanting thing that used to be there between them has left them both for two people better suited.  
  
Maybe Ryan just doesn’t know how to breach that distance anymore and, when he thinks back on it, it’s almost always been Shane. Ryan’s just goaded him into it each time, insisted. It’s not that Ryan doesn’t want it, it’s just that he doesn’t always know how to start. Sometimes Shane feels so distant, so far away… How can they have spent all those weeks together, last Spring, and Ryan still doesn’t know how to reach him? How can that be possible?  
  
How has he not noticed this until _now?_  
  
And Ryan thinks about how to do it, tries to psych himself up to be brave enough to reach out and catch Shane’s arm and pull him into a kiss, but he doesn’t. They’re not… there’s no _reason_ to… other than he wishes he could.  
  
All the other times they’ve done anything, it’s been because one of them said something, offered up this mess of thoughts they were having to the other person because they just couldn’t carry it alone anymore, in the hopes that they could make some sense of it together, and then… it had sort of become routine. He’d go to Shane’s, or Shane would come to his and they would just hang out, kick back, watch Netflix or something, and then they would climb into bed and, more often than not, inevitably, one of them would reach out…  
  
But it’s all, Ryan realizes now, been carefully constructed. They don’t touch at work, they don’t go out to bars like they’re _together_ because they’re not, and if one of them reaches out when they’re a little too drunk in public, it’s always been quickly pulled back, over before it can start. It’s been accidental, just a momentary loss of control.  
  
Ryan feels like maybe they’ve been spending all this time trying _not_ to lose control, but control of what, he doesn’t know.  
  
There was one weekend they’d spent almost entirely in bed. The first after one of those weeks where Shane was mostly quiet and irritated. So much so that Ryan had almost backed out of going to Shane’s that night, just to give him some space, until Shane had just started packing up when Ryan did with a soft breath of relief. That was when Ryan realized that Shane had been waiting for him to finish up his work. He’d been waiting for Ryan to come home with him, and Ryan didn’t have the heart to let him go home alone.  
  
Later, Ryan had been brushing his teeth when Shane appeared in the mirror and he'd jumped a little, pulling a face when Shane laughed. He leaned forward to spit into the sink. “Jesus Christ, dude.”  
  
“You should just buy a toothbrush and leave it here,” Shane said, “Instead of carrying yours around with you.”  
  
“Then I’d have no use for my toothbrush case,” Ryan had said, straightening up.  
  
Shane made a _that's_ _fair_ expression and shrugged a shoulder and said “I just thought—” but he didn’t finish. Instead, he stepped closer to him, pressing against Ryan's back, and Ryan had met his own eyes in the mirror as Shane slid his fingers beneath his shirt and into the waistband of his jeans, then ducked his head down until his lips slid soft and open over Ryan's neck — suggestive, and then Ryan had turned to face him…  
  
After that, it was sort of like a dream — all those lost hours, only leaving the bed for half-hour intervals: shower, food, one trip to the store for more condoms, from which Shane had returned with candy bars, and wine, which they drank from the bottle and got too drunk too fast to fuck, and then napped until evening and started again.  
  
He’d never lost track of time like that. By the time they both finally got out of bed for real, Ryan felt like he had no idea what day it even was, and on Monday, they’d laughed about it when Shane had hissed softly after sitting in his chair, both of them catching one another’s eye and Ryan giving him a look of _Oh my God, did I do that?_ and they both just died, laughing until there were tears in their eyes, and no one around them had any idea why.  
  
After that, there had been the morning just before Shane left, and Ryan still remembered the ache in his muscles afterwards, somehow echoing the emptiness of Shane being gone, and the hollow spaces where they’d tried to reach something together — pressing breathlessly into and against one another — and couldn’t, even as their bodies gave and gave until they were spent.  
  
“Earth to Ryan,” Shane says, holding a steaming mug out to him. Ryan blinks himself back to present, and knows he must look like a doofus because Shane gives him a look like he’s vaguely concerned for his mental health, then pulls away, leaning against the counter with his own cup.  
  
“I— huh?” Ryan asks.  
  
“I said, what do you want to do? If you want, we could go to the city.”  
  
“The _city_? Ryan repeats. “You mean Chicago?”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, “It’s like an hour away. We could take the bus.”  
  
“Ugh, no,” Ryan says. “No more cars, no more vehicles, ever” and he watches Shane’s smile fade.  
  
“Sorry you had to drive all the way out here, man.”  
  
“I didn’t have to, I wanted to.”  
  
Shane exhales though his nose and says “Same difference.”  
  
“Not really,” Ryan argues, and wonders if they’re really going to fight about this, now, because he’s not sure he can do it.  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, just humouring him, and takes a drink of his coffee. Ryan, perplexed, looks down at his and sees that Shane has made it for him again, the way he likes it, and he feels his heart twist a little.


	6. XIV-XVII

XIV  
_Shane_

Shane can feel the tension in the room, but he doesn’t push it. Whatever Ryan’s sorting through, he probably doesn’t need Shane to fix it. Shane really has no idea what he could even do. So they settle into silence, and when that’s too much and he’s downed his coffee, he goes to the fridge in search of something for breakfast.  
  
They end up sitting at the table with toast, and Ryan’s made some crack about Shane’s ‘cooking skills’, and somehow they both brighten a little.  
  
Shane tells Ryan to watch his mouth, and Ryan playfully (and poorly) insults him, and Shane looks up in time to see Finn come downstairs. Finn pulls out a chair and just says “Hey, Ryan,” like he’s not at all surprised to find him sitting here at their kitchen table, like it’s any old autumn morning and this is perfectly usual and it guts Shane, somehow, because maybe it could be…?  
  
He sort of marvels at how Finn can just be his usual friendly self even in the face of Ryan’s brilliant smile — like it’s nothing particularly special to him at all — and ask how he is, and how is work, and how was the drive up here, and Shane realizes all at once that not everyone looks at Ryan the way that he does, struck dumb by that smile every time.  
  
Ryan and Finn fall into the easy conversation of old acquaintances and somehow Shane doesn’t realize how rarely he sees Ryan from the outside, how rarely _he_ is not the centre of Ryan’s attention. He’s still too caught up in the centre of this thing to realize that Ryan looks at him in a way that’s different from the way he looks at Finn. Because to Shane, Ryan is still all smiles. Maybe he’s a bit sweeter and more polite with Finn, because with Shane he’s always waiting to throw something back in the face of Shane’s careless sarcasm and his skepticism, which is almost as careless but, Shane knows, far more perilous.  
  
Because he’s not just skeptical of ghosts and the supernatural, but of Ryan, and every look and touch and shaking breath he has ever offered up in Shane’s presence which Shane feels like he cannot, or does not know how to deserve.  
  
And that’s where Shane gets stuck. Again and again and again.  
  
In the end, they spend the day with Finn. They take Ryan to the places they hung out as kids — the creek, the railroad tracks that rarely see trains these days, the park, where Shane sits on one of the swings, feeling too big for the place, and watches Ryan and Finn mess around on the old rusted jungle gym and the plastic slide with burn-holes in it from lighters and graffiti that says _Ur mom suks dick_ and he laughs at their antics, and Ryan’s complete abandon, screaming and laughing like an idiot until Shane gives in, and drags himself from his own lethargy with effort and marginal success, but goes to join them anyway.  
  
There’s something in Ryan that just doesn’t care what the world thinks in a way that Shane can’t quite get to. Shane falls back into being weird. He’s weird, and so if he’s even weirder than usual, no one can really be _that_ surprised. Sometimes he takes how weird he is and just — stretches it out as far as it can go until it’s almost this manic state, this massive Fuck You to everyone who thinks he should give a shit about who or how he is. Because he Doesn’t. His weirdness becomes defiance, but Ryan’s weirdness is bright and sweet and _honest_ , and he steps up on to the roundabout and says “Shane, spin me,” and in that moment Shane wants to kiss him and kiss him until they both forget everything else, but instead he grabs hold of the rusted metal, feels the paint flaking beneath his palm, and pulls it around and around, mercilessly, just to hear Ryan’s laughter, his playful screams, close and far and close again, until he starts begging for Shane to stop, and he steps off into the gravel, dizzy and giggling, and Shane has to reach out and steady him before he crashes into something less forgiving than Shane’s own body.  
  
And Shane thinks _I am so, so in love_ , but he cannot say it.  
  
Then Ryan pretends to vomit on him and Shane shoves him away before he tips his head back to the sky and laughs and laughs because right now, he’s fucking happy, and for a little while he isn’t afraid at all.  
  


  
XV  
_Shane_

They’re home as the sun’s setting, and Shane’s almost elated feeling doesn’t falter for a while, even as Ryan meets his parents, and he knows he could think about this a certain way… he can see that Ryan does. He knows the difference between Ryan’s general nervousness with strangers and this, which is deeper and more uncertain, and he’s trying so hard to impress and Shane _knows_ it’s because of him. Because Ryan wants Shane’s parents to like him, like that matters.  
  
But it does matter. It does, and Shane doesn’t know why because they’re not together. They’re not.  
  
And he doesn’t let it get to him. He tries not to let it, because if Ryan wants to do this, that’s his own thing, and he’s never— they’ve never explicitly said they were anything, and so they aren’t… He almost succeeds in believing it until his father pulls Ryan away to show him the pond they made themselves in the far corner of their backyard, and Shane watches from the kitchen doorway, through the wavering air and faint smoke from the barbecue, as his father tells him some story about something Shane and Finn did as kids. Shane can only hear snippets, but it sounds like it’s about the time Finn almost drowned him accidentally and Ryan’s listening, looking riveted, and Shane wonders at Ryan’s ability to listen to everyone like he actually, really cares. And, Shane thinks, he probably does.  
  
Finn comes up behind him and his arm settles over Shane’s shoulders, a comforting weight and together they watch Ryan talking to their father. It’s definitely the almost-drowning story, and it’s so long ago, and so re-told, that their father knows how to tell it to get a good reaction and Ryan’s doesn’t disappoint. He laughs out loud and then looks back across the yard, fondly, to where Shane is standing in the doorway and for a moment their eyes meet. And Shane is grounded, somehow, by the weight of Finn’s arm, the distance between himself and Ryan, and the smoke that ever-so-slightly obscures them from one another, and so he doesn’t feel the need to look away.  
  
“Remember,” Finn asks, “when you asked me what made me think you guys had a thing?”  
  
Shane doesn’t answer, but tilts his head just a little, brow furrowing.  
  
“Well, that’s it,” Finn says, nodding with his chin towards Ryan, whose eyes are still on Shane’s. Ryan notices the movement, knows they’re probably talking about him, and gives them both a smile before he looks away. “And hey,” Finn says, “Kid drove across the goddamn United States for _you_.”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, and tells himself that maybe the word was at the edge of an exhale, and that’s why he sounds like he’s breathless.  
  
Then Finn says “You should probably do something about it.”  
  
Shane's voice is shorter, almost irked, when he says “Yup,” but he wonders if he can actually do it. He thinks about the way Ryan looked at him just now, like he wanted to hear Shane’s father tell him some stupid story from long ago, like he was so happy to hold onto one more piece of who Shane is, and it’s— overwhelming. Feeling kind of sick, like his own skin is too tight, Shane shrugs out from under Finn’s arm and goes back into the house.  
  
Finn shakes his head, rolls his eyes a little.  
  
Shane gets a glass of water, drinking it until the sick feeling fades, then heads back out. As he passes him again on his way back out into the yard, Finn asks, softly, “What’re you so scared of?”  
  
“I’m not,” Shane tells him, stepping off the porch. “Can’t you just leave it?”  
  
But Shane knows that he is. He is scared. He’s been scared his whole fucking life, maybe. Dusk’s gathering around them as they all collect to get something to eat, and somehow Shane is suddenly on the outside of everything again — everyone else talking and laughing around him. But he understands, now. It’s settling in on his shoulders and inside his chest, cold and heavy: it’s not that he’s afraid of his need for Ryan, he’s afraid of losing it altogether. Of losing whatever this is between them, afraid of losing _Ryan_. He’s afraid that he will end up battering himself, moth-like, against all this promised light, just to realize that he will never, ever reach its warmth. He’s afraid to feel anything at all in case it ends up never being _enough_.  
  
He doesn’t realize that he’s just been standing beside the barbecue holding his plate of food. Everyone else has moved away to sit in the lawn chairs near the fire, and he’s just been gazing absently into the wavering heat still rising into the night. Suddenly there’s a presence at his side, and it is warm and familiar and he blinks, and there’s Ryan, staring just as intently as Shane had been at the metal grill.  
  
“What?” Ryan asks, voice soft and pleasant “the fuck are you doing?”  
  
“Having a breakdown,” Shane answers, deadpan, and Ryan sort of smirks and looks up at him, not entirely like he doesn’t believe him. He nudges him with his shoulder. “Come on, big guy. I don’t want them to drag you away to the funny farm, don’t just stand there.”  
  
Shane snorts softly, even laughs, just a little, and then follows him back to the porch where they sit together on the step, just outside the little circle of firelight where Finn and his parents are chatting, and they eat together, in companionable silence, shoulder to shoulder, and Shane’s thoughts go a little quieter, for a while.  
  


  
XVI  
_Ryan_

Shane’s the one to get up to collect the dishes and take them inside to wash, and Ryan’s not sure if he should follow him or give him some space, but Finn catches his eyes and gives him an encouraging kind of smile and Ryan wonders why he doesn’t care that Finn obviously knows what’s going on here — at least a little — and he wonders if Shane told him.  
  
He gets up and trails Shane inside, finding him standing at the kitchen sink with his sleeves rolled up, up to his elbows in dishwater. He hasn’t noticed Ryan yet, his eyes on the plate he’s cleaning. He’s offset, in his white shirt, against the darkness of the window, slouching a little to reach easier, and Ryan’s eyes trace the familiar line of his neck and shoulders that make up Shane’s poor posture and, to Ryan, he’s so lovely in that moment.  
  
Until he looks up and sees Ryan and says, “It’s about fucking time, I’ve been slaving away in here,” and throws a drying cloth at him, and Ryan almost misses catching it because he’s laughing.  
  
They stand together doing the dishes and Ryan says “I like your family,” down to the bowl in his hands — warm from the water in the sink. Shane smiles a little and they both sort of glance sideways at one another. Shane looks out the window to where they can see the flickering of the fire, and the silhouettes of the others, but not much else. Then Shane scoffs softly and says “Sorry about the chronicle of my childhood.”  
  
Ryan makes a sound like laughing, but it’s not quite genuine. He feels his heartbeat, harder than usual, then says, “They think we’re together.”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, frowning.  
  
“I wonder—“ Ryan begins, and the words are there — _couldn’t we be?_ but he can’t get them out. The silence stretches on for far too long. Mechanically, Shane hands him a glass which Ryan takes, and then—  
  
Shane sighs, almost harshly, makes a sudden movement, shaking dishwater from his hands a little violently, to dry them, because Ryan has the drying cloth. He turns and his hands connect with Ryan’s shoulders and Ryan is pushed back, away from the window where — lit by the kitchen light — they were on display to any and all things out there in the night.  
  
Ryan’s still holding onto the glass and his breath hitches as Shane winds his forearm behind his neck and kisses him. He can feel soap bubbles sliding down the back of his neck and soaking into the back of his shirt, but then Shane makes this quiet, keening sound against his mouth as Ryan opens his to him, and he forgets about all of that and just presses into him.  
  
  


XVII  
_Shane_

Finally, the buzzing, waiting feeling inside him breaks open, and he hears himself make a sound against Ryan’s mouth, feels Ryan’s fingers curl in the fabric of his shirt near his stomach, and it sends something white-hot all through him.  
  
They both finally draw back for air and Ryan says “It’s about fucking time,” in his _I’m-mocking-you_ voice, and Shane laughs as the intensity of the moment slowly fades, and he presses his mouth to Ryan’s cheekbone, before he just ducks his head down and holds onto him.

It’s such a _relief_. Ryan’s wrapped his arm around Shane’s waist, but he’s still holding the glass with his other hand. Shane realizes after a few seconds, and draws away just enough to take it from him gently.  
  
He feels Ryan shift, as though to draw away completely, but Shane just sets the glass down on the counter beside them, and then, tentative and cautious, wraps his arms around him again. Shane thinks that it is the first time they have just… embraced, like this. For no reason. No one’s scared, or having a panic attack (Ryan), and it’s not because they’re all caught up in desperation or desire, like seeing him for the first time after months. It just is. It’s just this, and for a moment everything seems so impossibly simple that Shane is almost dizzy with it.  
  
Neither of them moves for a long time. Shane’s waiting for someone to come in, resulting in the necessary quick step away, but it doesn’t happen. Maybe they’ll stay this way forever, he thinks. He thinks, _okay_.  
  
When they finally do pull back, both of them ready to, Ryan raises his hands to his own face, drags the edges of his palms across his cheekbones as he turns dark eyes to Shane’s, and he looks almost stricken before he laughs softly. “Let’s add that to the list of things the ghoul boys do together.”  
  
“There’s a list?” Shane asks.  
  
“There could be.”  
  
“For just you and me?”  
  
“Yeah, man, it’s the Ghoul Boys List.”  
  
“Well, _put it on there_ ,” Shane tells him, sounding much more jovial than he feels. He feels… calm. Safe, but he’s rewarded with Ryan’s chuckle at his antics. The dish water is cold when they go back to it, and so he drains it and refills it again.  
  
“Hey, so,” Shane says, hanging up the drying rag as they’re finishing up, “When do you think we should head back to L.A.?”  
  
And he watches Ryan just _light up_ and can’t, in that moment, feel anything but exultant.


	7. XVIII-XXI

XVIII  
_Ryan_

They spend one more day in Illinois, and he feels a little like they’re on more solid ground. He helps Shane pack, which really means that he sits on Shane’s bed and talks to him while Shane does the laundry — both of theirs — and puts things into a suitcase with such a half-and-half mix of care and complete disregard that Ryan has to laugh, wondering if Shane can tell that he’s endeared. Eventually, he has been waxing poetic about Kobe and basketball for long enough that Shane is forced to heave a sigh and say “Ryan, please. _Please_ shut up,” and Ryan says “You shut up,” and then, almost on top of that, “Make me,” and they both freeze a little.  
  
Shane leans back on his heels, and their eyes lock and then Shane stands so that Ryan has to look up at him. Just as his heart starts racing in anticipation, Shane says “No. Then you’ll be even louder than when you’re talking.” And Ryan bursts out laughing, cheeks heating up, because he’s not wrong.  
  
He doesn’t miss the knowing fondness in Shane’s smile though, before he goes back to packing, or the darkness in his eyes, and they find a moment in between clearing away supper and going to bed — or rather, Ryan goes innocently to shower before the drive back starts tomorrow and, suddenly, before he can even undress, Shane follows him into the bathroom and shuts the door and turns the water on and in the handful of minutes that follow, proceeds to pin him against the door and stroke him off in the steam that rises up around them and makes them sweat, fogs up the mirror, and Ryan’s cries are drowned out beneath the sound of the water pounding down into the empty shower and Shane’s fingers pressed against his mouth, and as Ryan finishes into the cup of Shane’s hand, Shane kisses him open and wanting. Before Ryan can even remember how words work, Shane’s cleaned his hands up in the shower’s spray, and then he’s gone in a wash of cooler air from the hallway and a cocky wink and Ryan is left to get into the shower, under the hot water, and rest his forehead against the wall until he fully comes down.  
  
“You bastard,” he tells him, coming back into Shane’s room with his hair wet, to find Shane cool as can be, lying on his bed with his laptop open, and Shane just laughs. Ryan crosses to him, and closes his laptop, giving him plenty of time to stop him in case he really is working on something, but Shane doesn’t. He rolls, easy and pliant beneath Ryan as Ryan pushes him onto his back and follows him down, settling on Shane’s other side, but close enough to kiss him. He doesn’t, yet, even as his fingers slide tentatively down over Shane’s chest and stomach, searching for the hem of his t-shirt. Gently, Shane catches his wrist. “Later, okay?” he says. “Not here,” and Ryan feels a little chastened until Shane kisses him, lingering, and for long, long moments, neither can quite pull away.  
  
They just lie together for a long time, Ryan’s head on Shane’s chest, listening to his heartbeat while Shane softly pulls Ryan’s damp hair between his fingers over and over, and they’re quiet, and finally, Shane says “I thought coming here would feel like coming home, but it doesn’t…”  
  
“Yeah?” Ryan whispers, just so Shane knows he’s listening, that he hasn’t fallen asleep. The room’s gotten dark around them, making the lamp seem to glow brighter.  
  
“Yeah,” Shane answers, and he sounds fucking sad, and Ryan almost shifts to look at him, but Shane spreads his fingers over his hair, palm pressing ever ever so gently down so Ryan stays. Ryan hears him swallow.  
  
When he doesn’t speak again, and time stretches unfamiliarly out until Ryan doesn’t know if it’s been five minutes or fifteen or fifty, he asks “What about L.A.?”  
  
“I miss it,” Shane tells him. “But I don’t think that’s home either.”  
  
Ryan doesn’t know how to respond, except, “Well, hey… if you’ve ever wanted to live between here and California…” and he’s rewarded when Shane laughs softly, the sound vibrating through his ribs so that Ryan can feel it, and he smiles.  
  
“Now’s my chance,” Shane says as Ryan says “Now’s your time to find out,” and they both end up laughing harder, but it fades out a little too fast.  
  
And Ryan thinks, again, about the time that Shane told him he would probably do anything for him and he thinks _if there’s ever been a time to step up, it’s now,_ and so he says, “You know, anywhere you wanna stay, anywhere you find that feels like home… if you want, I’ll stay there with you.” And he feels like he means it like he’s never meant anything in his life, and it is terrifying.  
  
Shane’s chest shudders a little strangely beneath Ryan’s head, but his fingers are still spread in Ryan’s hair, holding him gently down so that he doesn’t look up, even as Shane’s other arm blocks the light for a split second as it passes between the lampglow and Ryan’s eyes and for a second or two, everything is horribly silent and still, except for Shane’s heartbeat. His chest isn’t rising and falling at all beneath Ryan’s cheek anymore, not for a long moment, and then Shane pulls in one quick sharp breath, somehow too shallow, and lets it out shakily. When he swallows again, it’s a little wetter, somehow, and Ryan is thinking _oh fuck_ and feels his own chest just ache.  
  
And then Shane whispers, “Yeah,” and Ryan can’t tell if it’s agreement or just understanding, and he sounds normal, and his breathing rights itself, but Ryan knows suddenly that it’s just an illusion — a trick, like smoke and mirrors.  
  
After time… ten minutes, maybe; maybe half an hour, Shane shifts enough to turn off the light, and finally lets Ryan go, and in the darkness, Ryan only shifts enough to slide into the spot against Shane’s side he normally fits into and he can’t think of what to say. He doesn’t know if he _should_ say anything, so he just holds onto him tightly. Somehow, they both fall asleep.  
  
Morning comes quickly, and they wander out into the dawn to head back home to L.A., and Ryan wonders, where is home, really? But he knows, too, that this is somehow much bigger than that.  
  
But he doesn’t bring it up again, and so they don’t talk about it.  
  
  


XIX  
_Ryan_

“This is nice,” Shane says.  
  
“Yeah, you like it?” Ryan asks, glancing over as Shane pulls on his seatbelt in the passenger seat.  
  
“Yeah, there’s lots of… leg room,” Shane says.  
  
They pull away from the curb and turn around in Shane’s driveway (a little awkwardly, and after a messy couple of tries). “What the fuck are you doin’, man?,” Shane laughs as Ryan finally pulls out into the road.  
  
“I’m out of practice, okay!” Ryan says, and he’s all tension, making sure that everything’s in order, trying to get the feel for this huge rig again.  
  
“Sure, whatever, Ryan,” Shane tells him, folding his legs in a little closer, pressing into the back of the seat, huddling into his sweater and jean jacket. It’s very cold this morning. Ryan’s got his sweater sleeves pulled halfway down his palms and Shane’s eyes linger on Ryan’s fingers for a moment too long.  
  
“I could drive,” Shane ventures after a little while. “If you want.”  
  
Ryan glances over at Shane who never looks entirely comfortable in cars, who would rather walk an hour than be in the driver’s seat ten minutes and says “Nah, it’s cool. You can be in charge of the music though.” He fishes out his phone and holds it out. “I could use a coffee.”  
  
“Wow,” Shane says, finding Ryan’s music and scrolling through it. “This road trip thing’s not turning out so bad.”  
  
“Yet,” Ryan jokes, ominously.  
  
“Yet,” Shane agrees.  
  
Shane falls asleep before they even get out of Schaumburg and Ryan fondly hates him for it, and gets his own coffee. by the time the sun is well and risen, they’re having breakfast in some chain-restaurant.  
  
Iowa, again.  
  
And Shane insists on paying for it because it’s been Ryan’s money that’s gone into gas and motel rooms and Ryan gets the feeling that if he doesn’t just give in and let Shane pay for their greasy breakfasts and coffee, Shane will start asking for Ryan’s receipts and calculating how much he thinks he owes him on the restaurant napkins in order to somehow make up for it, and Ryan can’t even _express_ how much he doesn’t want that.  
  
Still, as they leave, crossing the parking lot back to the car, Shane walks close enough that their arms brush and Ryan pulls away from him reluctantly as they climb back into the van. It’s a long drive ahead.  
  
Ryan’s music isn’t exactly Shane’s taste. He spends a lot of time playing music videos from YouTube and listening to Ryan complaining. He’s playing Runaway Train as they hit the middle of Nebraska, and Ryan’s groaning like Shane’s slowly killing him with tunes. Orange sunset and shadow flickers over them in bursts. It’s not been a bad first day, and they plan to stop soon, for the night, neither of them keen on sleeping in the van after that first long day driving.  
  
After they get supper — just takeout from somewhere. Ryan pretends not to be pissed at Shane when he hands his credit card over to the motel front desk, literally over Ryan’s shoulder before Ryan can even dig out his wallet, but whatever. Ryan curls up in one of the beds while Shane showers, scrolling through his phone, waiting for him to come out, willing to put the whole who's buying what nonsense behind them…  
  
He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he does, and when he wakes up, it’s morning, and Shane’s curled up in the other bed with his back to him and, for some reason, Ryan feels very fucking lonely.  
  
  


XX  
_Shane_

He can’t say he doesn’t know why the fight starts. They’ve been driving for three hours, and it’s only day two, and his legs are already cramping, leg room or not, and he’s sure Ryan’s not doing much better, judging by the way he keeps trying to get a kink out of his neck, and how he’s been quiet since this morning. And Shane’s been thinking about how even if he pays for every motel room and drop of gas and diner-breakfast from here to California, he isn’t sure it’ll be enough.  
  
“Can you stop?” Ryan asks, sort of smiling at him in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes, after Shane buys whatever they’re eating for lunch.  
  
“Stop what?” Shane asks, through a mouthful of pulled pork as they settle at a picnic table outside some restaurant. They’re about an hour and a half inside the Colorado boarder, and the afternoon sun is just warm enough to let them sit outside to eat.  
  
“Paying for everything?”  
  
“You paid…” Shane points out. “You paid to get up to Illinois—“  
  
“Yeah, for _myself_ ,” Ryan says. “Don’t blow all your money just ‘cause you…”  
  
“What?” Shane asks, suddenly not at all hungry. He puts the sandwich down.  
  
“Nothing,” Ryan says, clearly wishing he hadn’t brought it up.  
  
“No, what? ‘Cause I what?”  
  
Ryan’s quiet, staring at the dying grass without seeing it.  
  
“What, Ryan?” Shane asks again.  
  
He watches Ryan as he takes a short breath and meets Shane’s eyes. “Feeling bad, or whatever it is that you’re doing.”  
  
“Feeling _bad_?” Shane repeats, even as he feels something drop heavily into his stomach.  
  
“Yeah, it’s an awful lot like when you paid for my drinks and yours right after you told me you were leaving for six months in the first place,” Ryan says, “Remember that?”  
  
Shane does and he swallows. He feels a little sick.  
  
“What’s going on, Shane?” Ryan asks him.  
  
And Shane searches for the sarcastic comment, the nonsense-sentence that will get him out of this, but Ryan’s fixed him with dark, earnest eyes and Shane finds himself lost for words.  
  
“Dude, you can tell me… if it’s— I mean, holy shit, if you’re just waiting to drop another bomb on me, then just do it now, get it over with.”  
  
“Like what?” Shane asks, voice softer, calmer by comparison, because Ryan’s starting to talk a little too fast, a little too intently and it twists something in Shane’s chest. He pokes at the crumbs that have fallen off his food, but doesn’t eat any more.  
  
“Like, _hey Ryan, I’m just going to up and leave for New York for six months,_ or _Hey, Ryan, I don’t want to keep doing Unsolved_ , or _Hey Ryan, thanks for coming all the way out here, but I’d really rather… fuck someone else,_ I dunno—”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Shane asks, without really looking at him.  
  
“You tell me. You’re the one who goes all weird, you’re the one that slept in the other bed like we—”  
  
“You were _asleep_.”  
  
“So what? I wake you up all the time, every ghost hunt, come on, dude—”  
  
“What, are you mad that we didn’t fuck?” Shane asks, looking up at him, and his voice breaks a little, into something less soft.  
  
For a moment, they hold one another’s eyes too intensely. Ryan sucks his teeth, and looks away, brow furrowed like he’s confused. And then he says, “If you don’t wanna do this, man, just say it.”  
  
And Shane knows _exactly_ what Ryan means, even as he asks “Do _what_?” because, in some way, he’s trying to know what Ryan thinks, he _needs_ to know.  
  
“What— _this_ , I dunno. Whatever the fuck we’re doing? Unsolved, you and me. Do you really want to come back, or were you just caught up in the moment, ‘cause I can— I’ll take you back. If that’s what you want.”  
  
“Is that what _you_ want?”  
  
“Jesus _Christ_ , Shane, what do you think?” Ryan asks, and something is _burning_ in his eyes. He asks again, quieter. “What do you think?”  
  
And Shane’s frozen. When he gets his lungs to work again, he pulls in a breath and says “I’m not doing this here,” and stands up, leaving his food behind, and makes his way back towards the van. He hears Ryan sputter something indignant. They both slam their respective car doors a little harder than they need to.  
  
They’re silent, not looking at one another. For a minute, Shane thinks that Ryan might drop it, but then he says “Whatever’s been wrong, I dunno why you won’t just tell me,” and he sounds so hurt, and Shane just _hates_ it.  
  
“It’s— there’s nothing _wrong_ Ryan, it’s just— there’s a million different little things—” he sort of trails off into incoherence but it doesn’t matter.  
  
“Okay, so start with one.”  
  
It’s so simple. It’s such a simple request, and it’s something about the simplicity of it that makes Shane feel so awful. Like he’s failed at something significant and fundamental because Ryan’s right, he really should be able to just start there. And suddenly the prospect of starting anywhere is so overwhelming and that just makes him feel worse. Angrier. So instead of starting anywhere, he says “Why are you so mad, because I went to New York or because you think I don’t want to do this?”  
  
“I’m not mad, I’m worried, and you’re apparently incapable of giving a straight answer.”  
  
“What’re we doing here, man?”  
  
“That’s what I’m _asking_ you!”  
  
" _Jesus_ , Ryan--"  
  
And suddenly, they’re both shouting over one another, and it’s all bullshit. It’s ridiculous. Both their voices reverberate around the closed space of the car until finally Shane starts saying “I cannot fucking— I can’t fucking believe this is _happening_ right now,” and silence falls, ringingly, between them. Then Ryan pulls his seatbelt on and starts the car, pulling out onto the highway without another word.  
  
Shane can’t shed the horribly anxious feeling, even when Ryan doesn't turn back, but rather keeps heading west, to California. He buckles his own seatbelt with difficultly, because his hands are shaking. It’s not a good feeling, nor one he’s used to. He looks over at Ryan who has his eyes forward and jaw set. His hands are at ten and two on the wheel, as always, but he’s holding on tight, and Shane thinks that he could tell Ryan now, both of them breathless and heated with anger, that he is in love with him. He could say the words and mean them, only he would be using them to hurt — to prove Ryan wrong that Shane wants to be anywhere but with him — and he wonders how it is now, how it is only now, when he is more furious than he can remember being in a _long_ long time, that he thinks of telling him. Really considers it. And he wonders if he could ever do it in any other way, and he thinks, yet again, that he does not deserve Ryan because he cannot tell him what he wishes he could, even when Ryan asks him.  
  
And something breaks.  
  
  


XXI  
_Ryan_

Something changes in the air, in the silence between them, and Ryan would be kidding himself if he said he didn’t pay it any mind. But it’s not until Shane makes this tight, restricted breath that Ryan feels his heart _drop,_ horribly.  
  
He looks over at him, but Shane’s twisted away from him, one hand up over his face, but Ryan knows — knew already — that he is crying. And not like the other night, either. This is something worse, bigger. “Oh… shit, Shane…”  
  
Shane scrubs his sleeve over his face and says “Ignore this,” and Ryan has to turn his eyes back to the road.  
  
He thinks maybe they will just… forget this, too. Like they forgot whatever happened the other night, before they left Illinois — or pretended to forget. But as hard as Ryan can hear Shane _trying_ to keep it together, he’s not, and Ryan can’t— he can’t just keep driving like it’s nothing to him that Shane’s world’s just falling apart two feet away, and Ryan knows he can’t just keep setting this aside.  
  
He pulls over onto the side of the road as soon as he gets a moment and Shane curls into himself a little more, leaning over his legs, and Ryan can’t see his face at all, but his back and shoulders are shaking. The silence between them is terrible and Ryan is just about to reach out to him, fingers almost touching the soft collar of Shane's jacket, when Shane undoes his seatbelt, ignores Ryan’s soft “Shane…” and gets out of the van. Ryan watches him circle the font, all long legs and hunched shoulders as he makes his way down into the low, half-dead grass stretching away from the shoulder of the road.  
  
Ryan follows him out a moment later, but he stays beside the van. It’s windier here, where the land is flatter and they aren’t blocked by buildings. For a moment or two, he just stands, uncertain, barely hearing the cars flying past on the road behind him. His eyes are fixed on Shane, but he gives him a few minutes. He waits until Shane straightens a little, until his shoulders stop shaking, and then Ryan half walks half slides down the incline to the grass below, and quietly crosses to him.  
  
“Sorry,” Shane says to him when Ryan comes up beside him. But he won’t look at him.  
  
“Don’t be stupid,” Ryan tells him, soft.  
  
Shane nods, like he’ll try that.  
  
They’re both quiet for a long time. So long that Shane crouches down in the grass and Ryan wanders a little, never going far. The natural light changes. He’s just starting to think that it’s getting cold when Shane looks up at him and says “I think, when we get back to L.A., eventually you’re gonna realize that you deserve better.”  
  
“Better, better than what?” Ryan asks.  
  
Shane looks at him in a way that Ryan can’t quite read, brown eyes intent. And then, so softly that if he wasn’t looking straight at Ryan, Ryan might not have understood him, he says “Me.”  
  
“Why the fuck would you say that?” Ryan asks him, moving closer, going to Shane like he’s drawn to him and that’s when Shane turns his face away.  
  
“You drove all the way out to Illinois because I was being too… cowardly to make up my mind. You paid for everything to get here… I could’ve just bought a plane ticket, but I didn’t, and you— you’re so…”  
  
Ryan doesn’t need to ask what he is, because he thinks, maybe, probably, it’s the same way he thinks of Shane. “It’s not a fucking contest, dude,” Ryan says. “I wanted to see you. I _want_ you to come back with me—”  
  
“Yeah, you’re a really good person,” Shane tells him.  
  
“So are you!” Ryan shoots back, feeling incredulous, almost desperate. “You didn’t like… trick me into coming out here, I came because I missed you!” The thing is though, is that Ryan’s tried to convince Shane of enough things; ghosts, UFOs, energy… that he can see that it’s not enough evidence for him right now. Fine. He barrels forward. “This isn’t— there’s not some rule like— now you owe me this much for what I decided to do to see you, that’s not how this _works_ —”  
  
“How what works?” Shane asks.  
  
Ryan flounders for a moment. “This… I dunno. This.”  
  
Shane swallows, takes a breath and speaks softly down to his hands clasped between his knees. “What’re we doing, Ry?”  
  
“Hopefully we’re gonna stop fighting,” Ryan says, “Because that was a fucking nightmare.”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says. He looks up, relishing the sting in his eyes at the brightness of the sky — almost pure white.  
  
“I don’t need you to pay me back,” Ryan tells him, softer. “I don’t… I don’t even need you to come back with me, but I’d really fucking like you to. So stop— stop buying my fucking sandwiches."  
  
That startles a laugh out of Shane, but it’s over too soon, and not right, and Ryan watches him press the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Okay,” Shane says, softly.  
  
And he finally has to ask the question that’s really been scaring him. “Shane, what’s… what’s really wrong?”  
  
“I don't know… what if we go back to L.A. and it’s too much? I mean we’ve built this all up for months, and… we can’t just go back to how things were, and… and I don’t want to go back there, be back _there_ and then—”  
  
Silence falls and stretches out, and Ryan can feel something rushing through him so terrifyingly, so violently that he’s too scared to push. He’s shaking all over and he’s not entirely sure why.  
  
Finally, having to raise his voice to speak over the wind that’s beginning to pick up even more, Shane says, “I don’t want to lose you,” and he tries to meet Ryan’s eyes but doesn’t quite make it.  
  
Ryan takes a breath. “Lose me how?... I’m not the one who keeps leaving, you know,” Ryan says, and his voice is uneven for a split second, but somehow, it’s not accusatory either. “I’ve been here. I’ll always be right here, if you want me.”  
  
“You can’t really predict what’s going to happen, though—” Shane says, dropping into his knowledge-voice, and Ryan raises both hands to his head, pushes his fingers through his own dark hair, already a little wild from the wind.  
  
“Oh my God, dude,” He says. “Look, I can’t give you analytical proof, you— you’re just going to have to take my word for it.”  
  
Shane wets his lips, then nods, but he hasn’t looked up at him yet, so Ryan’s not sure it’s an agreement to trust him, or if Shane even wants to believe him, but maybe it’s getting there. Or somewhere, at least.  
  
It’s also getting colder, and they have a ways to go still, before tonight.  
  
“Can we go?” Ryan asks, instead of what he wants to ask, which is _Do you believe me?_ or, the more selfish _Aren’t you going to promise_ me _anything?_ And Shane's 'me too,' seems to rattle around in his skull. He shakes it off.  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says. “Let’s go.”  
  
Ryan holds out his hand to him and Shane clasps it.  
  
“You know, for a smart guy…” Ryan begins as he helps pull him to his feet.  
  
“Shut up,” Shane whispers, but doesn’t let go of his hand until they reach the van.  
  
And Ryan has a gut feeling that that isn’t the end of that.


	8. XXII-XXVIII

XXII  
_Ryan_

“All right,” Ryan says, about forty-five minutes later. They've driven into a little rain storm, and aside from the rain and the windshield wipers, it's been silent since the roadside. “Fuck this, let’s stop somewhere. Let’s just— let’s take a break.” Somehow the words sound bad or— wrong somehow. Shane doesn’t move. “Let’s just chill, you know?” Ryan presses. “Get out of the car for a minute.”  
  
Shane sort of peels himself away from the driver-side door and straightens up a little. “Okay,” he says, soft, voice almost hoarse. “What’re we gonna do?”  
  
“I dunno. Whatever, hang out. Anything.”  
  
“Yeah, sure.”  
  
He can feel Shane’s eyes on him for a long moment, but he can’t meet them.  
  
  


XXIII  
_Shane_

It’s a hotel this time, and Shane thinks of all the times he playfully bitched about never staying in nice places and wonders if Ryan took that to heart. Still, it’s not exactly four stars or anything like that, but there’s no layer of dust on the curtains, and the carpet actually looks like its been vacuumed in the last month, and he doesn’t feel the need to check the furniture for weird stains before he sits down, which he does, on the bed nearest the door.  
  
To his surprise, Ryan drops down onto the end of the bed with him, side by side and Shane’s mouth feels strangely dry as he casts around for something to say, but then Ryan says “I’m starving.”  
  
“Yeah… we left the sandwiches.”  
  
Ryan’s mouth twists and Shane can’t help but smile he catches Ryan’s quick, uncertain little glance. It’s enough — the ice breaks a little, and Ryan laughs.  
  
Shane pretends not to watch as Ryan putters around like the little engine that could — checking his phone, sort of half-unpacking, scanning the room service menu — all the while pretending he’s not watching Shane. And Shane is so, so deeply exhausted. He feels like he’s been fighting this sadness off for months and months, and finally he’s succumbed, and it’s just left him bone tired and hollow. Empty feeling.  
  
Ryan’s back, sort of hovering near the end of the bed Shane’s still sitting on. His eyes are on his phone screen, but there’s a nervous energy radiating off of him that makes Shane sit up a little straighter. “You want to eat?”  
  
“I don’t want to move for at least ten hours,” Shane says, and doesn’t quite end up making it sound like a joke. Maybe because it’s not.  
  
“Yeah, I mean, we could order room service, just stay here. There’s two bottles of wine in the fridge.”  
  
“Let’s get wrecked,” Shane says, perking up a little, but it’s not because he actually wants to drink. Actually, it’s sort of self-destructive.  
  
“I don’t think either of us is getting wrecked on two bottles of wine,” Ryan says. “Also, maybe let’s eat first.”  
  
Ryan holds out the menu at him and Shane, too tired to argue, takes it from Ryan’s outstretched hand and tries to work up something that feels like an appetite. His body is hungry, but all the food looks like it will taste like sawdust. He picks something to order anyway.  
  
After the food comes, and they settle against the headboards of their respective beds, Ryan tosses the remote over to Shane’s side and says “Hey, I bet you could even find Frasier,  and it’s then, that Shane realizes what this is. Ryan is taking care of him — quietly, subtly, and from a bit of a distance, but that’s what he’s doing, and Shane would hate it, if he didn’t want to just fall into it so badly. For a second he thanks any gods or even little ghoulies that might be listening that he is so exhausted, too drained to cry again, because he almost feels like he could. He pulls the remote towards himself with his fingertips, then flicks the television on.  
  
The food starts to taste like something. The familiarity of the show on TV is soothing, somehow, and Ryan is sitting on the other bed, occasionally making little cracks at commercials and little snippets of conversation and Shane feels less like he wants to just check out, sleep for days, hope it’s all better when he wakes up.  
  
It’s a moment he holds onto for a long time. One he returns to when things are tougher than he’d like them to be. It’s nothing special, and in time he forgets everything they said, but he holds onto the memory anyway, tight. With time, it blurs together softly at the edges until it is just he and Ryan and the murmur of the TV, and the pale rainy-day light, and a _feeling_ …  
  
It feels very safe.  
  
  


XXIV  
_Ryan_

They’ve just sat around all day. They joke about how long Ryan’s going to be able to get away with calling in sick to work, and Ryan lets himself be anxious about that for a little while.  
  
By the time it’s dark enough to shut the curtains and flick on the lights, Shane’s not exactly back to normal, but he’s getting there and Ryan feels some of the tightness in his own shoulders fall away.  
  
“When do you want to leave tomorrow?” Shane asks. They have opened the wine, passing the bottle back and forth between their beds. It’s a very dry red, and Ryan can see where it’s stained the chapped places of Shane’s lower lip and wishes it didn’t do to him what it does, settling somewhere in his lower belly.  
  
“Uh—“ he drags his mind back around to the question. “Whenever. Let’s just go whenever we get up.”  
  
“Work’s gonna fuckin’ fire you, man,” Shane jokes.  
  
“They won’t,” Ryan says, even though there’s a little flicker of anxiety in his belly.  
  
“No, they won’t,” Shane agrees. “God, okay… I should shower, or…” He turns his head towards the bathroom and heaves this huge sigh like it’s one hundred yards away and not a handful of steps. “Would you judge me if I don’t?”  
  
“If I have to sit in a car with you for another twelve hours, then yes,” Ryan jokes, “Definitely.” and Shane chuckles softly as he drags himself to his feet. Ryan watches him and then, his heartbeat pounding so hard he actually feels a little sick and lightheaded — and it’s not from the wine — says: “I’ll come with you.”  
  
Shane was about to toss the remote back to him, and he fumbles and drops it onto the floor. He looks so much like a deer in headlights that Ryan starts laughing, can’t help it. “God, is that what I look like when _I_ get spooked?”  
  
“I’m not _scared_ ,” Shane says, and his voice is breathless, on the edge of something that might be laughter or something else, something hotter, and Ryan’s laugh fades into a breathless giggle.  
  
“I don’t have to come.”  
  
“No, I want you.” Shane blinks, reiterates: “I want you to.”  
  
  


XXV  
_Shane_

It’s not like he’s never seen Ryan naked before, stripped bare and vulnerable and just— Shane remembers the shift of Ryan’s shoulders beneath his fingers and how fast his pulse flutters in his throat when Shane’s hand is between Ryan’s thighs, and how that fluttering pulse feels beneath Shane’s tongue. He remembers it vividly, but at the same time, he’s somehow forgotten how goddamn beautiful this man is, and it’s a lot more real, somehow, under the bright hotel lights, than in the dim half-dark of their respective bedrooms in Los Angeles, or even during the quick, desperate handjob he’d given Ryan in his own bathroom in Illinois, the scrape of denim and zipper against the back of Shane’s knuckles as he got him off. Or maybe it’s just that it’s right now.  
  
Shane undresses half turned away, and the outlying spray of the water is cold when Ryan turns it on. Shane remembers that he doesn’t like showering with people because someone is always out of the stream of water, shivering.  
  
Ryan’s holds his hand under the spray from the showerhead, waiting for it to be the right temperature. The front of his hair has gotten slightly wet, falling forward into his eyes. Shane watches as he pulls a face, wrinkling his nose and reaching up to push his hair back. Extremely matter-of-fact, Ryan says: “No, this sucks,” and turns the tap so it fills up the bath instead. Shane is hit with equal parts anxiety and relief and it sort of balances out nicely.  
  
“I have never appreciated you more,” he tells him, and he means it, but Ryan just snorts softly, like he thinks it’s just Shane being sarcastic again. Shane doesn’t correct him.  
  
It’s a bit awkward, truthfully. The tub isn’t quite so spacious as the one at the Dauphine — the one that was supposed to be a jacuzzi and, disappointingly, wasn’t — and Shane steps in first, half-shocked at the heat. He arranges his limbs so he’s all folded up, knees and shoulders above the water, and he’s wondering if they both just shouldn’t have wimped out and wore their underwear or swimsuit trunks, but it’s way too fucking late for that, now.  
  
“Just two guys sitting in a tub again,” Ryan murmurs, “Damn that’s really hot,” he remarks, lowering himself in opposite Shane.  
  
“Yeah, we’re going to cook in here. Like wascally wabbits.”  
  
“ _What?_ ” Ryan laughs.  
  
“You know. Elmer Fudd,”  
  
“Yeah, I _know_ Elmer Fudd. Jesus, you’re weird.”  
  
It’s so warm that Shane can’t really hold onto any anxiety he was feeling. The water sort of masks just how naked they both are, and how pale and ungainly he is compared to Ryan and it stops being awkward pretty quickly, but he also has to stop looking at Ryan directly because the water makes him flushed and lovely and it’s a bit— it’s a lot.  
  
He leans back against the cooler tile behind him and closes his eyes, listens to the water drip from his fingers back into the bath, and they’re quiet for a long time.  
  
He’s a little startled to feel Ryan’s fingers, hot and wet with bath-water slide along the near-dry underside of Shane’s wrist where he’s resting his arm against the edge of the tub. He doesn’t open his eyes even as he tenses a little, but Ryan just holds on, very gently, and rubs the pad of his thumb over the bone of Shane’s wrist, making little circles. When Shane exhales, it’s shakily.  
  
It’s Ryan who sinks down and somehow finds a way to get his ankles on either side of Shane’s hips until they both stop trying to occupy only their own sides of the tub. Ryan doesn’t let go of Shane’s wrist, even when Shane twists his palm upwards to feel Ryan’s fingertips on his pulse, and the more purposeful pressing-down as he drags his thumb against the bottom of Shane’s palm.  
  
“Jeesus, I could probably get off on that,” Shane half-jokes, and Ryan laughs softly, but the silence that falls after that is heavy, somehow.  
  
“Shane?” Ryan says, after a moment, and Shane lowers his free hand, the one Ryan doesn’t have, from his forehead into the water, and looks at him, blinking in the light. Ryan’s eyes are locked on his face and Shane feels his breath catch a little at the intensity there, but it’s not just that— there’s uncertainty, too. Ryan’s worried, and Shane immediately knows where this is going, and he tries to brace himself.  
  
“Can we talk about…”  
  
“Come— don’t,” Shane says, cutting him off, shifting so he’s sitting up straighter. He hears Ryan make the smallest sound of protest. “Come here, like— come—“ he can’t quite say what he wants, but he reaches out for Ryan’s shoulder and tugs, and turns him a little, and Ryan gets it. There’s an awkward tangle of limbs and some of the water spills over onto the floor, but Ryan settles with his back against Shane’s chest and Shane wraps an arm around Ryan’s shoulders.  
  
“Can’t talk to my face, Madej?” Ryan murmurs, even as his fingers settle on the outside of Shane’s knee where it emerges from the water, and then slide down the sharp bone of his shin like Shane isn’t just an awkward collection of limbs to Ryan. Like Ryan wants to be touching him.  
  
“Not about this, I don’t think,” Shane says, and he slides his thumb over Ryan’s collarbone. He doesn’t know what to do with all this half-misplaced intimacy, but he tries, and Ryan relaxes against his chest, more fully, and Shane exhales and lowers his head until it rests against Ryan’s.  
  
“Today…”  
  
Shane closes his eyes, grimacing. He doesn’t want to talk about this _at_ all, but he also doesn’t want to fight again. He doesn’t want to lose this warm press of Ryan’s damp skin against his own. And he still doesn’t know how do to his, and he admits as much. “I really don’t know how I would even start…”  
  
“Okay,” Ryan says, and this time, he doesn’t tell him to start with one thing. Trust Ryan to pick up on something like that. This time he guides Shane through it. “Then tell me why you think you’re not good enough for…” he almost says ‘me,’ but changes at the very last second, “for this.”  
  
This. Their Thing. Nameless still, and growing stronger and stronger all the time.  
  
Shane fights not to tighten his hold on Ryan because if he says the words, then they’ll be out there, real, and Ryan can use them how he will. But at the same time, if he says them, if he puts them out there in all their raw, horrible truth, Ryan will be able to pull away. It’ll be like ripping off a band-aid, Shane tells himself. If Ryan’s going to leave, maybe it’s better to get it over with now. Just do it, and stop living in this middle-distance where he’s not sure anything can really become anything at all.  
  
So Shane takes a breath and, protected by the darkness behind his own eyelids, and the smell of Ryan’s still unwashed hair, and the almost too-warm dreamlike state of the bathroom, he speaks. “Remember that jacuzzi tub at the Dauphine?”  
  
Ryan hums softly in the affirmative.  
  
It’s a moment Shane thinks about a lot, and so it’s not hard to pull up to the surface. They’re almost back there again, now, only this time they’re so much closer than before, and he has so much more to lose. Or maybe the same amount, except now he understands it better in it’s magnitude.  
  
“I… sometimes get, I dunno. Sad. Or not—” he sighs. “Sometimes things just get so — heavy, like they’re sort of impossible to carry or… hold onto, emotionally without just feeling really miserable. Like— here’s the thing: any other day, maybe the— the jacuzzi not working at the Dauphine would’ve been like, ‘ _W_ _elp_ whatever’, but that day, I dunno, it was… it just bummed me out, more than it should’ve.”  
  
“Yeah, I remember that,” Ryan says, and he turns his head a little so Shane’s nose brushes his cheek. He brushes his lips over the upper shell of Ryan’s ear and listens to the way his breathing hitches.  
  
“Is that what happened today?” Ryan asks.  
  
“No, today… I dunno. Today I just felt like an asshole, and like you didn’t deserve that… and… and then we got in a fight— I dunno. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that’s what happened today.” He takes a breath, thinking of how to explain this thing he’s lived with for so long to someone else. “Sometimes just suddenly, something normal will seem— bad. And then it just sits there, like— spilling all this negative shit into my head until I can— sleep or get rid of it, somehow. Or make tracks around it so I don’t have to think about it." Shane swallows, feeling so nervous. He’s holding himself so tight, inside, that he’s almost shuddering bodily, and Ryan leans back against him a little more, steadying him, giving him anchor. Shane curls his fingers around Ryan’s shoulder, his arm still wrapped around his chest.  
  
“And you made it better,” Shane continues. “Sometimes— _most_ times, you just— fucking _show up_ and make things better. And I think I started relying on you for that too much, and that wasn’t fair—” Shane takes a shallow breath. Ryan’s fingers leave his shin and wrap around Shane’s wrist instead and Shane wonders if Ryan can feel how hard his heart is beating against his back. He falters for a moment before Ryan starts to speak, and Shane panics a little and forces the words that are hovering tightly in his chest out because, otherwise, he fears he never will. “Uh— and so I might have left for New York ‘cause I didn’t— I wanted to make sure I could still be without you. I couldn’t— I _don’t_ want to put all that on you like— that’s such a shitty-friend thing to do—"  
  
"Dude, I don't care if—"  
  
"—shut up, Ryan, just listen, I— I need to not need someone for that, okay? I can’t rely on someone to make my life bearable— better.” He corrects. “And I don’t want to put that on you, I don’t care. I don’t care if you don’t care.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure that’s a Green Day song.”  
  
Shane lets out a desperate laugh and squeezes Ryan’s shoulder in thanks or relief or something like it.  
  
“I don’t… I think I can get that,” Ryan says. “But, I mean… if I want to; if I don’t mind doing it—”  
  
“You don’t mind now, maybe a few months or years from now it’ll just be endless — just this endless stream of bullshit that I need you to fix. That I can’t fix without you… And here’s the thing, Ryan, I left, and it didn’t work, I just— it was worse, these six months were really, _really_ awful, and I’m fucking— scared to go back to L.A. and just… when it’s too much for you, this thing with me, I won’t be able to keep my head above water without you. I can’t—”  
  
“You know, dude,” Ryan says, soft. “You’re kinda talking like you’re the only one who gets something that you need from this.”  
  
“Yeah, Ryan, ‘cause I am. I’m gonna take a lot. It’s going to take a lot out of you to be with me—”  
  
“Is that what we’re doing?”  
  
“We—“ Shane draws away a little. “ _'Be'_ — as friends, whatever. I— either way, whatever we end up doing, you and me, I...”  
  
“Yeah, but I don’t think _you_ understand,” Ryan says, and he twists to look at him, twists so that he pulls away from Shane’s touch completely, and somehow manages to settle, facing him again in the water, and there’s something in his eyes that shuts Shane the fuck up. “I hate to break it to you, but we're kind of already _in_ this. We _are_ friends, and I'm not gonna just bolt, I haven’t yet, and it’s not like I didn’t know about this. Sort of... I noticed, before, I just didn’t know, like, what to do...” Ryan’s being so, so careful and Shane feels like his heart’s going to break. “But you’re talking like you’re the only one that gets anything out of this,” Ryan continues, “when you make my life better, too. I mean— jesus, Shane,  
  
“No, don’t—”  
  
“Shut up,” says Ryan. “This isn’t _ghosts_ and energy here, I— I know you don’t always love doing the ghost hunts—”  
  
“I thought we weren’t talking about gho—” Ryan sort of surges forward like he might hit him, but he’s half laughing, half-whispering, “So help me God, Shane,” and Shane shuts up again, but he takes his first real full breath in minutes, even if he doesn’t quite manage a laugh.  
  
“I know you don’t love it, but you do it anyway, and I know you’re doing it for me. You think I don’t notice that? Or care? I mean, I know it’s for Unsolved, but—”  
  
“It’s not— it’s not just for Unsolved.”  
  
“No, yeah,” Ryan says, like he knew that for sure, all along, but Shane’s suddenly not sure he did. “And on top of that, there’s your— _stupid_ jokes, and the fact that I never get tired of being around you.”  
  
“You’ve told me _several times_ you want to murder me,” Shane reminds him.  
  
“Yes,” Ryan agrees, his tone a little too blasé, too deadpan, considering the topic. “But if I did murder you, I’d definitely miss you, afterwards.”  
  
“Jesus,” Shane says.  
  
“But seriously, Shane, if you think I don’t need you around just as much, you’re seriously ff— freaking deluded.”  
  
“Ryan— that’s different. You _drove to Illinois—_ ”  
  
“So _what?_ I did it because I know what a stubborn idiot you are!” Ryan exclaims, and then “ _How_ is it different?”  
  
“This is a— you're not listening, this isn’t just— I’m more messed up than—” Shane attempts, each time more unsuccessful than the last.  
  
“Dude, I _drove to Illinois_ ,” Ryan says, as though he didn’t _just_ dismiss this fact as irrelevant. Shane reels a little. “D’you hear what’s coming out of my mouth right now?” Ryan’s asking. “I drove there for you, because I wanted to see you that bad.”  
  
“I know that,” Shane says, softer. And he suddenly wishes very much that they weren’t both unclothed and so close together. He wishes that he knew what to say, how to explain, he wishes he knew what to _do_. “I know that, and it’s— I don’t know what to _do_ with it. I don’t know how to reciprocate.”  
  
“Just come back with me,” Ryan says. “That’s all I need.”  
  
“Oh-my-God-Ryan,” Shane breathes. Exhales it at once, almost mechanically. “You can’t just tell me something like that.”  
  
“Why? You’re the one that told _me_ you’d do anything for me.”  
  
Shane swallows and realizes how intently they’ve been looking at one another this whole time. He looks away. “Those were just words, Ryan, I never did anything. I mean— I could say anything I wanted to, but _you_ drove across the country to get me, don’t you see the difference there?”  
  
“Not really,” says Ryan.  
  
“I haven’t actually done anything!” Shane exclaims. There’s no fucking equality here, in this— whatever this is, I’m just _taking_ whatever you offer up—”  
  
“But you meant that. Right?” Ryan asks, apropos of apparently nothing, but then he clarifies. “That you’d do anything for me?”  
  
Shane suddenly doesn’t trust himself to speak, but he nods. Because he did. He fucking did mean it, all those months ago, in Ryan's living room, and he knows it with such conviction that he wonders why he’s fighting against it so hard, now. Maybe he’s still just running…  
  
“You— here’s what happened, okay? You _say_ something like that to me, then expect me not to drive out to get you?” Ryan asks. “You make me feel something that’s _way_ bigger than anything else I’ve ever felt, and you think it’s just _you_ who needs _me_?”  
  
Shane furrows his brow, then looks back at him. “What do you mean, I make you feel something bigger— Ryan, you feel everything like it’s— you feel _everything_.”  
  
“Yeah, so?” Ryan asks, like this depth of feeling is somehow bad, and Shane can’t quite get his mind to catch up. “It doesn’t mean that this isn’t special, or— bigger, somehow, than the rest…”  
  
And Shane swallows and swallows again and then says, voice so unsteady, “I don’t really feel much of anything, unless I’m with you,” and waits for his world to end.  
  
It doesn’t.  
  
  


XXVI  
_Ryan_

For a second, all Ryan can hear is his heartbeat sort of explode into his ears and heat spreads through his chest, unfurling too fast to get a handle on it. He knows Shane doesn’t feel much. That he is “bad at feeling” to use Shane’s own words, but not that _he_ Ryan, is, has somehow become…  
  
Somehow, this is not at all what he expected, but something clunks into place in his mind, something that’s been percolating for days and days and finally seems to take some kind of form, now that he knows where Shane stands, now that he actually knows, and doesn’t have to just make wild stabs in the dark. “Here’s what I think” he says, simultaneously grabbing hold of the edge of the tub for _something_ to hold onto as his mind runs a thousand miles an hour. “Yeah,” he continues, almost breathes it, because it’s all coming together. “You think you’re the only one who’s fucked up so far. Don’t you?”  
  
Shane makes a face like that’s _exactly_ what he thinks, and he’s not exactly pleased by it. He says “I’m… confused…”  
  
“It’s not like I haven’t thought about this, too,” Ryan continues, undeterred. “Like— there's all the times I waited for you to reach out first. But you always act like you’re the one who’s got to make all the right decisions, like you don’t want to push me into anything because then you’ll be pushing your own agenda, no hear me out. But I— I don’t need you to hold my hand, here, Shane, I’ve been in relationships, or— whatever. I’ve been here, before, I’m not— you’re not fucking corrupting me. It’s not like I didn’t know exactly what you meant when you asked— when you asked me to keep a toothbrush at your place or whatever, because I did, dude, I just— I just got scared.”  
  
“That’s not—“ Shane begins.  
  
“Yeah, it is. It is the same, that was definitely me fucking up, too. I’ve just been waiting for you to, I dunno, make some definitive move or something, because I felt— I just feel like I’ve been the one pushing you into everything. I still feel like I’m pushing you to come back with me, but I can’t— I don’t want to _not_ push, because I— I don’t want to lose you, either. And I dunno, I don’t know how to make this enough for you to believe it,” Ryan says, and his voice wobbles a little, but he checks it, fast. “Maybe this isn’t something you can like, logically compute in your big, stupid brain, I get that, but I need you to— just, I really need you to trust me on this, when I say that I fucking need you, too.”  
  
“Ryan—”  
  
“I thought you said you believed in something,” Ryan says, quicker, “Belief doesn’t just sustain itself, man, you have to work at it. Sometimes you just have to hope, I guess— so, whatever. Whether or not we keep doing this— this thing, or not, I don’t— it doesn’t matter. You’re my best friend, so I…” He’s losing it a little, his train of thought, the steadiness in his voice.  
  
  


XXVII  
_Shane_

“I fucked up, too—” Ryan’s somehow still talking, and Shane’s just trying to keep together all the pieces of his own fucking heart, and he’s hanging onto Ryan’s every word like he was drowning without them, without even realizing it.  
  
“—like can’t we just— both fuck up and just accept that and… and fix it, I don’t know… I really want to fix it.” Ryan finishes, voice going soft. “Shane…”  
  
Ryan says his name like it’s so much more than just what he’s called.  
  
Shane somehow gets it together. “How?” He asks.  
  
“I dunno,” Ryan tells him, and his eyes are so liquid-dark and so honest, that it makes Shane’s chest _ache_.  
  
“Don’t you worry that…” Shane starts, and his fingers have apparently found Ryan’s on the edge of the tub of their own accord, where the air has made them feel cool. He pulls them beneath the water and wraps them in his own and holds on, tight. “We’re always at odds, Ry” he tries to explain. “Every time one of us tries to get closer to the centre of this, the other’s trying to create space, it’s just— really impossible.”  
  
“So let’s not be at odds,” Ryan says, like it’s just that easy. “I mean… we could talk about it. Like human beings.”  
  
Shane rubs his thumb over Ryan’s knuckles underwater, eyes down and just feels the immensity of everything in this moment and wonders how all of it can fit inside him, inside them both —  
  
and then it’s just… heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat.  
  
_Okay,_ he thinks  
  
“I think we should probably call it something, then,” Shane says. “This thing?”  
  
“I kinda want to call it ‘together’,” Ryan answers. “I kind of want that to be what we are.”  
  
How does breathing work? Shane tries to remember. “Just kind of?” he whispers.  
  
Ryan looks up and shakes his head. “No.”  
  
“All in, then?” Shane asks, and their eyes meet.  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan says, and starts to smile, and Shane can’t help but mirror it despite how shaky he feels. “All in.”  
  
  


XXVIII  
_Ryan_

You can never predict tomorrow, but it doesn’t stop Ryan from trying, curled around Shane in one of the hotel beds, much later that night. He has no idea how to fix everything they’ve talked about tonight. In many ways, he knows there is no “fix”. And even if there were, Ryan thinks, it’s also part of them: part of their history. And it’s part of what makes Shane _Shane_ ; infuriating and ridiculous and lovely. But maybe they can make it a little bit better. Easier. Maybe they can share the weight of the heavier things, the ones that are difficult and unwieldy…  
  
They're not out of the woods. Maybe they never will be.  
  
But they're in it together, now, at least. And Shane, somehow, despite all his outrageously lengthy limbs, has managed to tuck his head down under Ryan’s chin, the two of them pressed tightly against one another beneath the covers. His legs and arms are sort of thrown haphazard and careless over Ryan’s body, and he’s heavy, and he’s been asleep for ages while Ryan’s mind runs wild. He still can’t quite fathom it, and he’s been trying for ages, but it’s still too big, too new, somehow, even though it’s been hanging between them for months. He has so many questions. Will they tell people at work? Their friends? Will he have to tell his family? _How_ will he tell them? Will they be able to reach out to one another in public? Will they be a couple that holds hands as they walk down the street? Would he want to? Would Shane?  
  
And there’s the thoughts that make him feel a little colder, too. A little more scared. Will Shane always just say ' _me too_ ’? Is that what Ryan’s in for? Can he handle that?  
  
Shane flinches a little in his sleep, like he’s not sure where he is, then stretches and they re-arrange themselves around one another.  
  
“Ryan.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“For the love of everything holy, stop _thinking_ ,” Shane mumbles, just on this side of coherent “I can hear it in my fuckin’ sleep.”  
  
And Ryan laughs.


	9. XXIX-XXXII

XXIX  
_Shane_

Late morning sunlight spills into the hotel room, illuminating the two beds — one unoccupied, the remote on the floor where he’d dropped it, the heavy green glass of the bottle of wine. Shane is sort of playing it all through in his head, mapping it out, what this room looks like, before he actually opens his eyes to it.  
  
It really feels like the calm after the storm. He feels like he should be waking up to the gentle rocking of a lifeboat beneath him and not just this ridiculously comfortable hotel bed. He should be somewhere in a lifeboat the middle of endless blue water, just lucky to have survived, because that’s how his brain feels; like he’s been battered by waves and wind and rain for so long that this stillness is reassuring, even though, maybe, there’s no land anywhere around. Ryan is beside him so, for now, he can remain calm. Hold fast.  
  
Something in his head clicks into gear as he thinks about Ryan — something a little more awake than this weird little imaginary boat in the ocean — and Shane finally opens his eyes. The room looks pretty much exactly how he expected it to.  
  
It’s definitely not a boat.  
  
He sighs softly, something cracking in his back as he stretches, and looks down at Ryan. The entire conversation last night plays back at record speed and then there’s just this dead-static-silence in his head before he thinks  
  
_Oh shit._  
  
_What did I do?_  
  
Shane tries _very_ hard to get some actual anxiety in behind those thoughts, because he’s been so fucking scared for so long, but he… he really can’t. He feels almost drugged under all this calm.  
  
Last night, after they’d pulled themselves out of the tub, Shane had gone so lightheaded at the combination of the change in temperature — at all that heat — and his sheer height, he’d actually had to sit down again, towel wrapped around his waist on the closed toilet lid, while white spots swam in front of his eyes. And Ryan, _God_ Ryan, had opened the bathroom door to get some cooler air in, and then sat on the floor beside him, his back against the cabinet under the sink, while Shane took deep breath after deep breath, his head between his knees. Until Shane was okay again. And Shane didn’t worry at all that Ryan might think he was being a burden. Maybe it could always be like this…  
  
Afterwards, when he could stand without his vision clouding alarmingly, Shane had gently ribbed him about how all those panic attacks Ryan nearly had in haunted houses probably made him understand what it was like to be too tall. To almost pass out because of an unlucky combination of lowered blood pressure and height.  
  
The day had been so long. So fucking emotionally draining. Neither of them had even bothered to get dressed before climbing, still half-damp, into bed. And even if he’d wanted to touch Ryan, kiss him, get him close — closer than he ever thought they could be — he wouldn’t have been able to do much about it.  He wondered what time they’d fallen asleep and thought that it couldn’t have been later than 10:30 p.m.  
  
Wow. What an exciting life he lived.  
  
And so here they were. They’d survived the night — one of the most draining nights Shane had ever undergone — and they were still alive in the morning. _This_ , Shane thinks, _must be how Ryan feels_ every _ghost hunt._ How _does he do it?_ Shane raises a hand to check his watch and realizes he’d taken it off before getting in the bath last night. Instead, he raises himself slightly and squints over Ryan’s shoulder at the digital clock until he can make his eyes focus enough to read it without his glasses. It’s quarter past eleven and Shane knows they should have been back on the road hours ago. Their checkout time is twelve, so he can pretend that the world has no other people in it but the two of them for a little while longer, but he also knows they’re going to have to get moving, and real life’s going to trickle back in.  
  
It cannot be good to sleep for this long, but somehow it feels so much better than all the sleeping he did in New York, all the time he spent just drifting somewhere between half-asleep and half-awake. Hoping to while away the hours, maybe, between nothing and something better.  
  
Shane lowers himself back onto the bed again, eyes flickering over Ryan’s sleeping face and wonders at the fact that whatever jagged thing that’s been snagging in his chest since last winter seems to have been rounded off a little at the edges. It’s not gone, but it’s — it’s easier to carry now. It scrapes at him less.  
  
He closes his eyes, but doesn’t sleep again, and when eleven thirty comes, he swallows down his uncertainty and shakes Ryan’s shoulder, gently. “Ryan— we gotta leave soon.”  
  
“Huh?” says Ryan, and drags the covers up higher.  
  
“Come on, buddy,” Shane says and pats his face a fraction too hard on purpose. “Let’s go.”  
  
Ryan opens his eyes just enough squint at him, and grumbles something about ‘What time is it?’ and Shane takes a steadying breath as he literally watches last night come back to Ryan in a slow, rolling wave. Ryan is so, so easy to read, and his eyes go kind of wide and uncertain way too fast for having just woken up and Shane almost wants to apologize and almost wants to laugh.  
  
He presses his lips together so he won’t smile, the joke already forming in his head, but then Ryan says “Hey,” in this soft, wondering way, like a greeting — like he’s almost surprised. Like they haven’t shared a bed all night, like he’s just running into Shane now, like he’s not entirely sure how to be one half of ‘together’, but he’s trying to find his footing. And it’s so, so intimate. Shane’s chest tightens, crumples unpleasantly, and his heart skips. He has no idea how to respond to that look.  
  
“Hey, Ryan,” he says, and it falls almost flat. “It’s 11:30.”  
  
“Jesus,” says Ryan, “How did we sleep so long?”  
  
Shane shrugs a shoulder, shakes his head a little and as he looks away and pushes himself up to sitting. Ryan sort of frowns and then rolls away to pick up his phone and something in Shane’s head says _You fucked up already_ and panic builds inside him so fast he almost feels sick. He freezes there, staring at Ryan’s back, at the shift of his shoulderblades, at the soft dark hair at the back of his neck.  
  
He feels almost paralyzed, his jaw working as his teeth grind together. He so badly doesn’t want to fuck up. He wants to hold onto this peaceful feeling so hard, but it’s already slipping through his fingers like water. His next breath gives him a rush of movement, and he gets up, sort of clambors over Ryan’s legs because the bed on his side is right up against the wall, and he wishes he’d dressed last night. He quickly finds some clothes and pulls them on, as Ryan sits up at his back, the sheets dragged over his naked lap. Shane buttons his pants and turns back to get a clean shirt out of his bag just as Ryan scratches at the back of his neck, still waking up and _Jesus, God, his_ arms, and he’s so beautiful and soft around the edges and Shane has no idea why he’s not still in bed with him. He starts to pull his shirt on, all mechanical movements now.  
  
He’s tugged it on over his arms, about to pull it over his head as he catches Ryan’s look. He’s peering up at Shane with his head slightly cocked. It’s that look where one eye is more squinted than the other, the one that says that he thinks whatever’s happening around him isn’t up to the standards of what Ryan Bergara _wants_ to be happening. “You freaking out, big guy?” he asks.  
  
Shane’s fingers tighten a little on the fabric and he wishes he _wasn’t_ half-tangled in his own shirt and he consciously pulls in a breath, but it hitches in the middle. “Yeah,” he says, and it sounds breathless, too irritated, even though he’s not.  
  
They both sort of go still and Shane’s mind won’t shut up. It’s a whole lot of negative bullshit and he’s so _so_ goddamn tired of listening to it. He shuts his eyes, pulls his shirt on over his head and when he re-emerges, Ryan’s looking away. He looks hurt, sad. All the air feels like it’s rushed out of the room. _Nope_ , Shane thinks.  
  
“Okay. Okay, retake,” Shane says.  
  
“What?” Ryan asks, soft and half-frustrated because he doesn’t know how to fix this, either. Shane crosses back to him in one step, climbs over him again with even less grace than the first time, and collapses onto the mattress beside him. “Retake, retake,” he’s saying, like a broken record, like a complete idiot, and he pulls Ryan back down onto the mattress with him, and Ryan’s saying “ _What_ the fuck are you—?” but he’s half giggling, and then they’re lying in bed again, facing one another, and Shane’s hand is still on Ryan’s shoulder. “Shhh,” Shane says, and then, like he’s chiding him for talking on set, “It’s a _retake_ , Ryan.”  
  
Ryan’s smile hasn’t quite formed completely, but nor has it faded, but he’s looking at Shane all confused and fond, but mostly confused, and Shane presses forward and kisses him, soft, and on the corner of his mouth because he’s really not sure if he— if he’s even going to be allowed to kiss him properly, but Ryan makes a little sound and the tension drops from his skin beneath Shane’s fingers and Ryan tilts his head just enough to kiss him properly. _Yes,_ Shane thinks, _yes._  
  
  


XXX  
_Ryan_

The kiss goes on a little too long. The whole thing gets a little carried away and suddenly Shane is over him, sort of all around him, all limbs, and Ryan's gotten one hand beneath the soft, worn fabric of his t-shirt and drags his fingertips down over the rungs of Shane’s ribs one by one just to feel him exhale hard against Ryan’s mouth.  
  
Ryan both loves and hates the way Shane holds back sound so tightly. The most he’s ever gotten out of him during sex was a handful of whispered words, a smartass comment or two, and all these breathless noises that mask something — something deeper, something wanting, and shaken from the centre of him. And it's unfair, Ryan thinks, because Shane can take him apart in minutes, if he wants to — has. He can make Ryan cry out almost, it seems, without trying. He’s swallowed so many moans Ryan has made against Shane's mouth, and Ryan’s pressed a thousand desperate sounds into Shane’s throat and shoulders, into the top of Shane’s spine. Just once, he wants to pull something like that out of Shane, and he wonders if anyone else has.  
  
It’s not the kind of question he knows how to ask.  
  
And it doesn’t mean that Shane’s little huffs of air, or the way his throat tightens around something that he swallows back like he did in his kitchen in Illinois, doesn’t just _kill_ Ryan, because it does, and so he’s already half-hard, and he presses his thigh up between Shane’s legs and is rewarded with a sharp jolt of hips against it, the rough scrape of denim against his skin.  
  
“Stop being dressed,” Ryan tells him, and Shane’s spine pops as he draws away to do as he’s told. His eyes are locked on Shane’s fingers as they undo the button of his jeans and Ryan's just pushed himself up onto his elbows when there’s a knock on the door. They both freeze.  
  
“Oh, god _damn_ , it,” Shane whispers, half falling over him, supported by his hands, and then he pulls away. Ryan drops back onto the mattress with a groan.  
  
“Get dressed,” Shane whispers, and sort of straightens himself out (poorly) and goes to answer the door around the corner. It’s just room service or something. Ryan doesn’t really hear the conversation, but it’s a brief one, and he knows they definitely should have been checked out by now. He’s buttoning his jeans as Shane returns.  
  
“Can we do a retake?” Ryan asks, and Shane snorts and dissolves into laughter, genuinely, and Ryan grins, hard, even as he reluctantly starts packing up.  
  
\---  
  
“I hate Utah,” Shane says, after they have been in Utah for approximately five hours. It feels like fifty. Still, they’re making better time today. Ryan’s determined to make up for the time they lost yesterday, because he’s Ryan.  
  
“I hate Utah, Ryan!”  
  
Ryan laughs a little. “I _know_ , Shane.”  
  
“Who would live out here?” Shane asks, staring out the window.  
  
“Well, I think we’re going to be sleeping here,” Ryan tells him, checking the time. He’s got a few more hours left in him, but they still have to eat supper somewhere, and he’s really tired of eating fries while he drives. He wants real food. “I want real food,” he tells Shane.  
  
“Well pull over, we could probably just take down a cow or something.”  
  
“What, and roast it on a spit?” Ryan asks.  
  
“Yeah.” Shane says. “Oh, don’t pretend that’s so outrageous!”  
  
“It’s absurd. I’m pretty sure there’s like a process before you can just cook a cow—”  
  
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Shane’s saying. “Don’t pretend you know, you Californians and your—”  
  
“You don’t know how to cook a cow, either!” Ryan’s saying. He’s just explaining to Shane why Illinois doesn’t automatically make Shane the Outdoors Expert when Shane says, “Oh look, pumpkins!” and Ryan glances over and there is, indeed, a field of pumpkins, and Shane’s ignoring his logic on purpose and Ryan rolls his eyes hard and says “I hate you.”  
  
He can’t seem to wipe the stupid smile off his face, though.  
  
  


XXXI  
_Shane_

“Speaking of your complete inability to be outdoors,” Shane tells Ryan a few hours later over supper, as though they haven’t had a hundred conversations in between (somehow, they are still in Utah. It’s like a nightmare). “I noticed that we have not slept in the van yet. I’m starting to doubt that _you_ even slept in the van.”  
  
“I _did_ sleep in the van,” Ryan says as he twirls pasta around his fork. Shane’s a little hypnotized by the movements of his fingers. “And I thought I was going to die.”  
  
Shane laughs and leans back. Realizes, in fact, how far he’s just had to lean back, because he was leaning so close to Ryan over the table. “You always think you’re going to die, Ryan.”  
  
“True,” Ryan says, and meets Shane’s eyes, and they are all warmth and dark. There is a fucking tealight candle on this table, and it reflects in his eyes and Shane can’t look away. He sort of wants to take the candle and chuck it. Instead he says “This feels incredibly cliché.”  
  
“You picked this place. You did that,” Ryan reminds him.  
  
“It was cheap!” Shane says. “I’m so poor. _You’re_ so poor. We’ve both apparently forgotten that BuzzFeed’s not funding our fucking hotel rooms. Or our gas.”  
  
“Huh,” Ryan says, and drops his eyes.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Our.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“That’s nice.” Ryan says.  
  
Shane can only stare at him for a second. His jaw works, he looks away. “Jesus,” he whispers, then looks back, half-smiling. “You’re too much. You’re too much for me.” It feels like a lot to say that, but he says it anyway. He’s said it, and it unfurls between them, and it was so, so worth it, because...  
  
Ryan props his elbow onto the table, curls his hand into a loose fist, and presses his second knuckles loosely against his mouth. He’s smiling, Shane can see it, because it’s huge and crooked, even hidden behind his hand and he thinks he has never felt so warm or so happy.  
  
“I’m trying to think of something to say to insult you,” Ryan says, “But I think you just broke my brain.”  
  
“Good,” Shane tells him. “I like it when you’re quiet.”  
  
“No you don’t,” Ryan says, extremely pleased with himself. He goes back to his food, smiling brilliantly. “We can sleep in the van tonight.”  
  
Shane does his best sarcastic _I’m so excited_ face. “Oh boy!”  
  
Ryan shakes his head. “Oh my God.”  
  
  


XXXII  
_Ryan_

Together, they walk back down the street to where the van is parked and Shane's saying, in a ridiculous voice: "Oohh, take me back to your _van_ , Ryan, do terrible things to me," and Ryan's wheezing, practically doubling over. He feels like he’s walking on fucking air. He has all day. He wonders how this is even possible. It’s like— it’s better than coming out of all those minutes in solitary, talking to ghosts — that moment where he steps out of those dark rooms and back into the circle of flashlight-light where Shane is always waiting.  
  
He’s surprised by a little tug on the shoulder of his jacket, and he looks back. Shane’s a little bit behind him, but they fall exactly into step as Shane tugs him close, into his side. Shane winds a ridiculously long arm around Ryan’s shoulders and there’s a “What?” not even halfway out of Ryan’s mouth before Shane’s lips — dry and faintly chapped — press against his temple.  
  
And to think, Ryan thought he couldn’t get any higher than this. Shane lingers a moment. They reach the van too quickly. Gently, playfully, Shane shoves him away. "You'd better at least take me somewhere nice."

Ryan laughs wildly into the night and, lower, softer — riding just beneath — Shane's laughter joins it.


	10. XXXIII-XXXVIII

XXXIII  
_Shane_

They get lost twice trying to find a place where they’re legally allowed to camp for the night, and when they do find it, it’s closed up for the season. They both sort of stare at the blocked-off road through the windshield like the chains across the entry will miraculously disappear but, of course, they do not. Shane glances at the clock. Ryan’s been driving all day, and it’s way too late now to find somewhere else and, frankly, if Shane doesn’t stand up soon, he’s afraid his legs are going to seize up forever.  
  
“I mean…” Shane ventures. “We _could_ just drive down the road a ways and just… park. There’s no one around, I doubt anyone’s regularly patrolling this area at this time of year."  
  
“That sounds like a good way to get murdered,” Ryan says.  
  
“By _whom_?” Shane asks. “There’s nothing around for miles except fucking desert. How often do murderers wander out of the _desert_?”  
  
“That’s a good point.”  
  
Ryan’s only agreeing because he’s tired. Shane doesn’t blame him.  
  
So that’s what they do. They drive a mile or two away from the camping grounds and just pull off the road and park. Shane gratefully pushes the door open and gets out, stretching his legs. It’s very quiet here. Shane thinks it's sort of peaceful.

Ryan’s going to freak out.  
  
As if on cue, Ryan’s door opens and shuts and he comes around to stand with Shane whose got his face tipped up to the stars. “It’s _so_ quiet here, dude,” Ryan says.  
  
“I really hope you’re not spooking yourself already,” Shane tells him, looking down at him. Ryan’s sort of scanning the area like he can see anything at all in this empty darkness and, with eyes that big, Shane sort of wonders if he can. “If you’re going to work yourself all up, and I have to listen to you listening to the _wind_ all night, we’re never going to get out of Utah,” Shane tells him. “I’m not comfortable driving fully rested, I definitely won’t be able to do it if you’re going to keep me up, asking me ‘did you hear that? do you hear _that_?’ all night long because you’re too freaked to go to sleep.”  
  
And Ryan’s sort of chuckling, because he knows he does that, but he’s already on edge, Shane can see it. “Ryan, don’t be ridiculous,” he tells him. “We’re miles from anything and anyway, look— I know it’s way above your head, but look up.”  
  
Ryan does, and Shane watches his expression soften. “Oh wow,” he says, because the stars here are _insane_.  
  
“You didn’t even— that was a good joke,” Shane says. “You didn’t appreciate that?”  
  
“I bet you can see those stars up close, can’t you, big man?” Ryan asks, and his head’s tipped so far back that Shane can see his every movement of his throat as he speaks. “You’re like a human telescope.”  
  
“I wouldn’t need a telescope if I could see the stars up close, Ryan,”  
  
“You know what I mean,”  
  
“No, I don’t.”  
  
“I’m just saying—“  
  
—  
  
They’re still arguing about the function of a telescope and whether or not Ryan’s comment made sense as they lay everything out in the back of the van for bed, using the van’s interior light. It’s actually not as awful as Shane expected it to be. He’s still going to be all folded up, but it’s not as claustrophobic as it could have been. Mentally, Shane’s not afraid of small places, but his joints sort of hate them.  
  
Maybe that’s why they don’t shut themselves up inside the van right away. They sit in the back with the doors open, or well: Shane leans against the edge and Ryan sits on it, his legs dangling at least a foot off the ground. He’s kicking one back and forth like a kid and Shane thinks he’s fucking adorable. He wants to reach out and tug the hood of the sweater Ryan’s wearing down from Ryan’s hair and push his fingers into that dark softness.  
  
He also realizes with a flip in his stomach, that he can now, but it’s so not a movement he knows how to make, casually, without turning it into or out of something else. He assumes they’ll get there eventually. So instead of reaching out to Ryan, Shane reaches into the van instead, digging through the stuff that’s here, that its owners left. There’s dishes and a pan and— “Hey!” he says after a moment, emerging with a tin of instant hot chocolate.

“Yeah, I saw that,” Ryan says, leaning over, “But I think it’s like a million years old.”  
  
Shane opens it. “It’s a little caked together,” he says, “But it’s probably still fine.” He shakes it a little. It barely moves. “Yeah, that’s fine, this stuff doesn’t really expire, does it?”  
  
“What? That’s disgusting, dude, you’re gonna die.” And then, like he wasn’t just totally against it. “We don’t have anything to put in it.”  
  
“There’s those— that water we bought at the gas station.”  
  
“You’re just gonna drink fossilized hot chocolate with bottled water? Are you just gonna shake it until it’s mixed?”  
  
“No, I’m gonna _heat it up_ ,” Shane says, grabbing the kerosene burner and the kerosene. He carries it a few feet away and sets it up. Ryan’s watching him like he’s trying to strike up a camp fire with a couple sticks and Shane laughs. “It’s not rocket science, Ryan.”  
  
“I was gonna use it— there’s instant coffee, too, but I thought I’d probably make it blow up.”  
  
“You probably would. Stay over there,” Shane tells him. “Actually, bring me the— there’s matches.”  
  
It’s dark, but maybe they’re both a bit too used to this time of night. Shane manages to make both the hot chocolate and in the instant coffee because Ryan’s certain that the hot chocolate’s going to result in another bout of someone-getting-food-poisoning. Ryan stands like four or five feet away at all times — not because Shane told him to, but because he genuinely thinks the kerosene stove will just explode without warning. Shane laughs about it. Afterwards, they come together in the back of the van again, and the warmth of mugs is comforting, and Shane’s relieved to have something to do with his hands that isn’t touching Ryan.  
  
“This is gross,” Ryan says after a while, because there’s no milk or anything for the coffee, and Shane laughs harder than he should, because he’s right. His definitely tastes sort of stale somehow, and way too sweet. “Yup.”  
  
They switch, and Shane doesn’t say _anything_ about Ryan’s fear of food poisoning as he finishes the hot chocolate, and Shane somehow makes it all the way through the most bitter coffee he’s ever drunk, and it’s somehow nice, anyway.  
  
It’s so nice that he can’t hate it, even a little.  
  
  


XXXIV  
_Ryan_

He’s relieved, a little, to shut the van doors to the night when they do decide to turn in. They can’t have the engine running, obviously, but it’s cold enough that he _wants_ the heater on. At least inside the van, there’s no breeze. Shane doesn’t even seem cold and Ryan low-key hates him for it as he drags one of the blankets around his shoulders. He pretends he’s not shivering. Shane laughs at him as he reaches up between the front seats and hauls his own bag from the passenger seat where they’ve put their luggage so they had space for the makeshift bed.  
  
Ryan watches as he digs his laptop out and tosses the bag back up front.  
  
“Answering your emails?”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane laughs softly. Ryan’s eyes flicker over him. He’s sitting crosslegged, knees and elbows too sharp, hunched over the computer in front of him. Music filters quietly out of the speakers after a moment and Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up.  
  
“It’s so you don’t imagine you hear any spooky noises outside,” Shane tells him. “We’re really not doing that, tonight, Ryan, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Ryan wheezes softly.  
  
“Seriously, we need to get out of Utah.”  
  
Ryan laughs harder, nodding. “All right.”  
  
“Are you really that cold?” Shane asks him.  
  
“Oh don’t start with your ' _You Californians_ —' ”  
  
Shane cuts him off. “Get under the blankets, then.” Ryan hesitates a second, then does. The blankets are warm and heavy, and he pulls his sweater off and shoves it beneath his head for a pillow. The overhead interior light snaps off, and in the dim light from Shane’s laptop, he can see that Shane’s the culprit, so okay, that’s not frightening. He shuts his eyes, brow furrowed a little. The music is still playing and it’s nothing he would ever listen to on purpose, but it’s sort of quiet and comforting, and he could probably fall asleep to it. He hears the soft plastic click of Shane’s glasses on some harder surface.  
  
And suddenly Shane is there, sliding beneath the blankets next to him. “Complaining about cold is just your way of getting into bed with me, isn’t it?” Shane asks, and Ryan’s caught between a laugh and some stupid quip, when Shane’s warm fingers run up over his arm.  
  
“Oh, Jesus, you _are_ cold.”  
  
“Yeah, dude, I _told_ you!”  
  
Shane sort of rubs warmth into his skin with his palm, and then pulls him closer, against his chest, and Ryan burrows into him. Shane shifts, and sighs and catches Ryan’s chin in one hand, tipping his head up. He tugs Ryan’s glasses off, and Ryan blinks as one of the arms comes too close to the edge of his eye. Shane doesn’t know what to do with them so he sort of tosses them in the direction of his laptop.  
  
“Hey—“ Ryan begins, because they better not get broken.  
  
“They were digging into me. You don’t need them, anyway, it's-- try to sleep.”  
  
Shane’s laptop fades into sleep mode, but the music still plays. The night is impossibly dark without the van’s light or the stars from outside which are blocked out by the van’s blackout curtains, and Ryan feels like he’s just gone blind, and he swallows because yeah, there could be anything out there in the night.  
  
Shane maybe just exhales, or maybe he scoffs quietly, but his fingers against Ryan’s back press almost imperceptibly tighter.  
  
“We should be able to make it to L.A. tomorrow,” Ryan says, because his mind is starting to melt just a little at the edges, like static, at this dark and something else. If he lets himself, he could get really freaked. This is a distraction. A reassurance.  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says.  
  
Ryan takes too long to manage to get the next question out. “So am I— do you want me to take you to your apartment, or?”  
  
“I— can we just see how we feel when we get there?” Shane asks.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Ryan tells him. “If you wanted though, you can come to mine.”  
  
“Okay,” Shane says, and Ryan can’t discern anything at all from the way he says it, and wants to. It doesn’t sound like acquiescence exactly.  
  
The music winds on, not quite loud enough for Ryan to catch all the words, but now his anxiety about Shane and going home is occupying his mind.  
  
Shane inhales beside him and then says “I don’t think…” he doesn’t continue. Ryan waits for a long time. At least Shane’s breathing is calm, not hitching and strange like when he was filled with so much hurt. Ryan doesn’t know the right thing to do or say to draw whatever Shane’s thinking out of him, but he presses a little closer anyway, tangles them up more.  
  
“I sort of don’t want to go back,” Shane says suddenly. “Not— this has been… it’s never really just been us, like this,” Shane says. “Maybe the distance from everything… the rest of the world, you know? No crew, no familiar landmarks, just…”  
  
“Yeah,” Ryan says, because he does get it, this time. “No _ghosts_.” and he’s relieved when Shane laughs softly. “But yeah,” he adds “it’s going to be weird to go back… back to everything.”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, like that’s exactly it.  
  
“Do you really think it’ll change anything, though?” Ryan asks.  
  
“I dunno, Ryan. Not… change it. Make it harder, maybe. Sometimes you’re about all that I can handle.”  
  
That stings a little. “Oh, thanks a lot.”  
  
“That was— I meant for that to sound nicer.”  
  
  


XXXV  
_Shane_

“Yeah, sure you did,” Ryan says, but he sounds like he’s smiling. Shane slides his fingers from Ryan’s hair beneath his ear and along his jaw, and he touches his fingers softly to the soft edges of Ryan’s mouth to be sure he is. At least that’s what he tells himself.  
  
His smile fades a little, but the air has changed, and Shane doesn’t pull away. Ryan exhales. “Your hands smell like kerosene.”  
  
Shane hesitates, then drags the edge of his thumb over Ryan’s lower lip. He can’t even hear the music anymore — it’s all just—  
  
Ryan makes a sound. It flashes through Shane’s mind like a bulb blowing. It sparks straight through to the centre of him. He catches Ryan’s jaw up, and feels him swallow just before he kisses him.  
  
He leans over him, because it’s easier, and feels Ryan’s body arch up into his, stretching to reach Shane’s mouth, and Shane’s fingers slide down over Ryan’s jaw and throat, feeling the beginnings of stubble. He keeps going, down over Ryan’s chest, catches the bottom of his shirt, and tugs, and they both sit up so he can get it over Ryan’s head. It’s like they’re continuing what they started in the hotel room that morning. Ryan seems to have forgotten the cold, or maybe he just doesn’t care. His hands slide up Shane’s sides as he rucks his shirt up as well, and then it’s off, Shane helping, and they find one another’s mouths again.  
  
It just takes one brush of his hips against Ryan’s, really, and Shane says “Okay,” breathless, and pulls back. “I— take those off.”  
  
Ryan’s sort of laughing as they both shed the rest of their clothes in the darkness, the small space. The back of Shane’s hand collides with Ryan’s shoulder and he says “Ooh, sorry!” because he has no idea what he hit, and Ryan’s laugh erupts into something genuine and wavering. Shane taps the mouse on his computer, and there is light again. Ryan’s eyes look impossibly dark, and Shane reaches out for him, can feel him shivering a little, all tension and want. “Jesus, Ryan,” he whispers.  
  
“I swear to God,” Ryan says, “A murderer could wander up and just— peer through the window, I’m not stopping this time—”  
  
“Good,” Shane breathes and bites down on Ryan’s shoulder, because he fucking wants to. Ryan’s breath hitches and the way he arches his neck, vulnerable — there’s something wild and visceral about that and Shane reaches down and catches hold of Ryan’s thigh, pulling him closer, pushing him down, leaning over him.  
  
He swallows a groan as Ryan’s fingers — hot — find their way to his cock and he presses into the circle of his hand, reaches down as well and his fingers tangle with Ryan’s fingers, lets his cock slide along the underside of Ryan’s, and listens to his swear as Ryan drops his head back on his shoulders. “I— dude— if we’re gonna have sex, you can’t—”  
  
“I _can’t?_ ” Shane teases, but he eases up. He finds Ryan’s mouth again, fingers exploring the soft, thin skin on the inside of Ryan’s hip instead, his stomach, the place his ribs meet. Ryan’s breath is all erratic beneath his fingers. He looks up just in time to see Ryan slide two fingers into his mouth, his dark eyes meeting Shane’s, before the laptop screen goes black. Ryan catches the back of his thigh, fingers sliding slickly over the base of his spine and Shane gasps softly and drops his head down, their chests rising and falling fast together.  
  
“Hey—“ Ryan says, and it takes Shane a second to drag himself out of this desperation and away from the feeling of Ryan’s fingers brushing against him, the feeling of them almost, but not quite, slipping inside.  
  
“Huh?” he asks, breathless.  
  
Ryan’s touch is gone. Shane’s world sort of fractures.  
  
“Why don’t we ever— why don’t you want to top, with me?”  
  
“Uh, I—” Shane blinks himself back to his mind and away from his body which seems to take a weirdly long time. “I don’t— not want to?”  
  
“Then why don’t we?”  
  
“I dunno. We just haven’t, I guess.”  
  
“No, I mean, why don’t we now?” Ryan asks. “Tonight.”  
  
“Oh.” He’s not giving very intelligent responses here. He thinks about how he’s only ever bottomed before. He thinks about how anxious he used to feel about this— how much he wanted Ryan to know that—  
  
“—back to earth for a second, Shane,” Ryan’s saying, and he’s still beneath Shane, and they’re both still breathing sort of fast, and Shane is very aware of both of their bodies in the dark, he’s aware of the gritty sound of the music, and of his heart which is beating a little too hard.  
  
“I didn’t want to freak you out,” Shane says. “Gay crisis, or whatever.”  
  
“Okay, yeah,” Ryan says, “For all that time? I mean— we… I thought it was pretty clear I was sort of over that. That I was into— us.”  
  
“I… I dunno, Ryan. Ugh.” The moment’s sort of killed, and Shane’s aware now, of the cold air, and the weird atmosphere, hovering… “I mean…” He pulls away and Ryan’s fingers sort of tighten on his arms for a second, but then he lets Shane go. “I don’t know, the whole… I didn’t want you to feel like I was—“ It’s the whole corruption thing all over. He knows that was a mistake now, and he doesn’t want to re-live it. He rubs his eyes. “I wanted you to feel like you… could stop, if you ever needed to. Like it was your choice.”  
  
“Well, I didn’t. I didn't want to stop. I wouldn’t want to now.”  
  
“You know,” Shane says. “You say that, but we’re literally stopping _right now_ to talk about this, and _you_ said you wouldn’t, even if a murderer—” it almost becomes a joke. He almost makes it there.  
  
“I _know_ I said I wouldn’t stop, I just— let’s… can we? I want you to. Unless you still feel like I’m gonna end up running away.”  
  
So that’s it. This is an exercise in trust, or... maybe, a display of it. Either way, it’s laid out for them now, between them. They both know where they stand. Ryan's put it out there, and he's waiting for Shane to take the leap as well, and to do that, Shane just has to believe him. Flying blind. He has to believe Ryan when Ryan _tells him_ that Shane doing this won’t make Ryan feel trapped, won't scare him off.

And Shane… he has to somehow not fuck up and hurt Ryan, because Ryan is very small and so very trusting, and Shane can’t stand the thought of losing the way Ryan looks at him when he gets spooked, and it suddenly feels like a lot. It was easier when it wasn't his responsibility. He can’t stand the way he feels when he even imagines that Ryan might end up with the kind of awful experience Shane had the first time he ever tried this, way back in college... But then, Shane thinks, this is different. _They’re_ different, now. And maybe he’s not destined to mess up everything, because he somehow hasn’t messed up this thing with Ryan _yet_ , not irreparably, and so…  
  
“Where’s the— okay,” he says, remembering to actually agree. “Where’s the lube?”  
  
Shane hears Ryan scramble up and he squints against the overhead light as Ryan flicks it on to go through his bag. Ryan tosses whatever they need onto the bed and reaches up to turn the light off again and Shane says, “Don’t, I—… we should probably be able to see what we’re doing.”  
  
“It’s—” Ryan begins to argue, but then just gives up because it’s not worth it.  
  
Shane exhales. “At this rate, we are literally never going to have sex again, because this conversation definitely killed whatever—”  
  
Ryan starts laughing. “Shut up, Shane.”  
  
Shane licks his lips, still a little hesitant, his eyes on the condoms, the lube.  
  
“Shane,” Ryan says, again. “Come on. You really think I can’t make you want it again?” He grins. It's a shit-eating grin, a challenge, all wicked-dark eyes  
  
“Well," Shane breathes a soft laugh, let's it rush from his lungs as he smiles. "You’re welcome to give it a shot.”  
  
  


XXXVI  
_Ryan_

It’s different from what he expected. He doesn’t know what he expected, but it was maybe more pain, or… there’s certainly _discomfort_ but Shane’s mouth is on his mouth and his throat, and his fingers are easing in and out of him so carefully that Ryan’s mind keeps slipping into distraction. He feels sort of embarrassed, now, about the first time he and Shane tried this together, and how careful he’d tried to be, and definitely failed, but it had been clumsier back then, for both of them, and he hadn’t had the first clue as to what he was doing, and months of having sex with Shane had sort of let him — let both of them — figure out how this worked.  
  
And Shane is, apparently, infinite patience. The very embodiment of it.  
  
Ryan sort of already knew that, because Shane is very patient when they’re hunting ghouls, but that’s a different sort. That’s disengaging, then, and he’s definitely not disengaged now as his fingers carefully spread open inside him, and he swallows the sound Ryan makes. He licks at Ryan’s mouth and it sends a jolt down his spine, relaxes him somehow. Every time Ryan starts to tense up, every time the touch begins to grate, Shane pulls his mind away to something else, something that makes Ryan _want_ that touch again. That touch, and more.  
  
“Okay,” Shane whispers after what feels like an hour, and Ryan tenses without meaning to as his heart rate picks up, his cock twitching against his stomach. “Let’s— shh,” Shane whispers against his ear before he draws back a little. He opens his eyes for the first time in forever, watches Shane’s fingers slide down over him, slow, too lightly, as though he needed any more help to get fully hard. Then Shane pulls back and slicks his own cock with lube. God, they have used so much lube...  
  
Ryan would be lying if he said there wasn’t some kind of connection the first time Shane pushes inside him. It’s sort of overpowering and too sentimental, maybe — he knows it is, because he’s just like that — _he’s_ too sentimental and then Shane makes a little, stuttered sound and it takes a moment or two more, but that’s it, they’ve managed it and Ryan laughs, all relief and _God_ he feels like—  
  
  


XXXVII  
_Shane_

“Holy shit,” Shane murmurs, feeling that laughter intimately and it twists something hot and desperate in his stomach. “I need you to not move at all for a second.” He’s so hard that it kind of hurts, and Ryan’s so— it’s a lot to handle right now.  
  
Ryan sort of giggles “We did it,” and Shane grits his teeth against his own laugh and says “Shhh,” fingers tight on Ryan’s hip, holding him still, holding on for dear life.  
  
Shane can feel his heart pounding. They are both so still that he can feel his pulse between them where their bodies connect and even that feels like too much. Maybe Ryan’s been back and forth in his desire while Shane opened him up, but Shane’s been needing him this whole time. He hears himself think _do math equations_ and chokes a laugh out desperately, and Ryan’s fingers dig into his hair as Shane takes long, steady breaths. But he’s okay, they’re okay. Very slowly, he slides back from the edge.  
  
When he can handle it, he pulls back to meet Ryan’s eyes, takes in Ryan’s parted lips and the feeling of their breath meeting up all uneven. Even like this, Ryan still has to look up at him. Somehow the sex, the desire part of this is not what he’s feeling intently. It’s still there, flickering somewhere at the very edges of his mind, but for this moment, there is only intimacy, and this impossible closeness, and he thinks Ryan’s heartbeat is radiating all through him, somehow tangling up with his own. The playlist plays its last song and silence falls between them. It’s just their breathing now. Shane says “I love you.” And _means_ it. And he doesn’t even have time to get scared because Ryan’s breath shudders from his chest, and he makes this half-laugh, half-overwhelmed sound and says “Yeah,” and pulls him down, and Shane knows _exactly_ what he means.  
  
Shane sucks and bites marks into Ryan’s neck because he doesn’t care what videos Ryan’s going to have to shoot back in Los Angeles. He’s tired of doing everything so that it can be hidden, and every sound Ryan makes, every rough noise gritted out through his teeth, every cry, every whispered curse, sends desire coursing heavy and aching through Shane, gradually filling him up from the inside until they’re moving together towards an impossible peak and Ryan is _shaking_ beneath him, and Ryan’s hands can’t seem to get a grip, and they are everywhere, in Shane’s hair, holding tight to his arms, sliding up and down his back, dragging his hips into Ryan’s own fucking _heat_ over and over again.  
  
Shane lets out a ragged sound accidentally, and Ryan’s body clenches around his. _Oh God_ , Shane thinks, overwhelmed, _oh_ Jesus _._  
  
  


XXXVIII  
_Ryan_

It’s a little unfair, Ryan thinks, to answer _yeah_ , but he fucking— he understands, now. He gets it. Because what he feels for Shane is so deep he can’t even see the bottom, and for once, the unknown doesn’t scare him at all. And he knows that he could tell Shane that he is in love with him so many times, until his throat is raw, until the words lose all meaning, and it still wouldn’t be enough, and he’s not sure how, but suddenly he knows that saying those three words weren’t something that Shane was withholding from him when he said ‘me too,’ , that it wasn’t something that Shane was uncertain about, but rather that it was just so mind-bendingly immense and impossible and so dependent on trust and belief and all kinds of un-proveable things, that Shane — always the logical one — just hadn’t been able to just _say_ it and feel like it was _right._  
  
And Ryan couldn’t understand that before, because Shane wasn’t there— wasn’t _with him_ to hold onto him, to give him some kind of safe, reassuring anchor, while Ryan looked over the edge.  
  
Ryan holds Shane close by the shoulders, and Ryan’s mouth is against the hollow of Shane’s throat. His fucking _teeth_ are chattering, so he presses kisses into Shane skin to sort of stop them from doing that, and tastes sweat, salt. He lets his hands slide down the length of Shane’s back, memorizes, again, the notches in his spine and finds the place it curves, wrongly, at the small of his back. This is just some physical anomaly that has a boring clinical name, but to Ryan, it is the place that throws Shane’s shoulders off kilter, that alters the placement of his ribs, that makes his right collarbone — the one Ryan traces now with his mouth — wet and open, and then gently bites into — higher and more prominent than the other, and Ryan knows these things intimately. He knows the patterns of freckles and moles that shower up and down Shane’s neck, and the back of one arm, exploding out across Shane’s back like some kind of strange human cartography and God, they are both so fucking— alive.  
  
And maybe it would be romantic to say that it is this that’s done it — that’s brought them this close together — this dark, close moment in the back of some van, somewhere in Utah, but it’s not. It’s really nothing to do with the sex at all, and everything to do with the way they hold onto one another, and Shane’s patience, and Ryan’s wild, insane idea to drive out to get him. It’s Shane’s determination to get to the other side of whatever was blocking him, and whatever will block him again — not only for Ryan’s sake, but for his own. It’s the shedding light on all the fucking terrors they’ve faced — those quiet, everyday terrors that are paralyzing and so subtle that you don’t even realize at first that they’ve taken root in your mind and your heart. It's finding someone to tell in some bathtub somewhere, or anywhere, really, who maybe can't do anything, but who at least listens and reaches out to you fucking _anyway_. And each of your respective broken places sort of fit together imperfectly, but it _works_.  
  
It works. It’s their trust — the one they’ve built over years of friendship, and reinforced these last few days — that even come morning, come the bright reality of their lives, and their jobs, and other people existing in the world, and misunderstandings and frustrations, and the chemical imbalances that exists in people's brains, and all of their multitude of differences... they’ve both got something to reach out to, now. They both reach out  _on purpose_ , to something that's still sometimes difficult and flawed, but as real and tangible as they can make it.  
  
It doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. Ryan knows that his own mind will make him question this again, and Shane’s will cause him to shut himself down and away from Ryan, but they’ve come through it once, and Ryan believes they can do it again. And again and again and again. He will do it until the day that he dies, just for the way Shane looks when he laughs.

Shane meets his eyes again, a question — _where are you?_ and Ryan blinks before he is pitched right back into this moment, in all its physicality, in all its messy, ridiculous, dazzling immediacy, and lets himself get lost in Shane this time, instead of his own thoughts.  
  
Shane is sort of closing him in, his forearms on either side of Ryan’s head, his lips against Ryan’s forehead (which Ryan doesn’t hate about his appearance, for a moment), and then against one eyebrow. Ryan’s eyes flutter shut, then open as he drags in a long, shivering breath and lets it out on a moan. He arches, and Shane’s hips rock against him and Ryan can feel him shaking and shaking. They are so close. Ryan arches up again so his cock slides against Shane’s skin, slick with Ryan’s own pre-come. Shane gets one arm behind Ryan’s shoulder, cradles the back of his neck and holds him even tighter against his own body, and they are _so—_ they are so close, and when Ryan comes, it is hard enough that he can’t even cry out, and in that moment, Shane whispers “ _Ryan_ ,” and maybe it’s the beginning of something, but then they’re both gone.  
  
Afterwards, after they’ve cleaned up as best they can, and the light has been shut out, Shane somehow makes himself small — or at least he folds his limbs enough to be all tucked into and around Ryan's, and it’s easy to fall asleep.  
  
And this time, neither of them worries about the morning.

 

\---

 

next chapter will be the last. you guys... keep being incredible, i adore you all. i hope you have a fucking wonderful year in 2k18.


	11. Epilogue

_Shane_

 

Shane wakes up first. He almost always does. He can barely see Ryan, huddled down beneath all the blankets beside him, and Shane spends a while just lying close to him. And he thinks about how the rest of Utah, the rest of Nevada are going to sprawl on and on, as they drive through the desert — that the scenery will be all haze and dust and Shane doesn’t know, exactly, what waits for him in Los Angeles. What waits for them. And he tries not to be scared about it.  
  
Maybe Ryan knows. Maybe Ryan’s always known California and will always know California, while Shane… he’s not sure what he’s going to do. Not really. But he knows he wants to be… here — he wants to keep waking up next to Ryan.  
  
Even in this shitty van where there’s not enough space to stretch out his legs and his knees hurt… that’s what he wants.  
  
Ryan’s still too asleep to really respond when Shane finally gives in to the ache in his joints and pulls away from him, towards the door. As Shane struggles to get dressed without moving the mattress too much, Ryan makes a sound that’s not actually words, but has the meaning of _what’s going on?_ and Shane says, soft, “It’s okay,” and Ryan falls asleep again, because he believes him.  
  
Shane unlatches the back door as quietly as he can, but it still clunks loudly as it opens, and he slips gratefully out in to morning air. It feels like all his muscles are sore, but it’s a good kind of ache, except for where his knees protest against being curled up all night. He hasn’t put on his glasses, so there’s this… weird softness to the world. He reaches up and rubs his face, drags his fingers through his hair. His watch tells him it’s just past eight in the morning and, depending on when Ryan wakes up, they should be back in L.A. before the end of the day.  
  
And Shane’s still not sure about work, or his leave of absence; he’s still not sure about his apartment which he remembers feeling _so_ lonely, and he’s still not sure about how to fit back into that old life, or what it will change about him and Ryan and, he thinks, he doesn’t want it to change anything. He wishes they could just stay the way they are right now. He wishes they could just stay in this fucking van in this fucking desert in Utah. (And he _hates_ Utah). But he knows that that isn’t how the world works, or how people work, and so he can’t even really wish it was. That’s impractical. That would make the universe chaotic. All topsy turvy.  
  
When he’s starving and it’s starting to get too hot, and he’s been out there long enough to miss Ryan’s touch — even though he'd felt like he needed the solitude just as much, to sort of make sure he was all together — he climbs back into the van. He doesn’t bother with being careful or quiet this time, and just carefully but heavily drapes himself over Ryan, over the blankets, pinning him in.  
  
“Let’s hit the road, Ryan!”  
  
Those dark eyes squint open and fix on his, and Ryan frowns up at him. “Fuck you, dude,” Ryan says, and Shane smiles. It comes from nowhere, but it’s genuine, and he draws away, laughing. “Come on, get up! Let’s get the fuck outta Utah, baby!” 

~*~

Shane spends a while texting people he doesn’t know from Ryan’s phone about whether or when they can pick up Ryan’s car, while Ryan drives.  
  
“Hey, here we go, we finally made it out of Utah,” Ryan says, and Shane looks up as they pass the sign that says ‘Welcome to Nevada.’  
  
“Heyy, the Silver State,” Shane reads, trying to drudge up some enthusiasm. It sort of works. “They say you can pick up your car any time.” He slips the phone back into the center console and thinks that it feels like all these familiar pieces are falling back together and he isn't sure he knows how to fit there anymore, in these pieces of his old life. Into their regular, everyday lives, and work, and Ryan’s familiar Prius, and Shane's apartment and… and he looks over at Ryan, at Ryan’s hands at ten and two on the wheel as always and Ryan’s eyes fixed on the road and Ryan’s neck, marked by Shane’s mouth, Shane’s teeth... and he really isn't sure he can just go back to the way things were. It's like he’s shed some old skin, some old life. It doesn't fit anymore, and he doesn’t know how to step back into it, or if he even wants to.  
  
“D’you feel like we’re leaving everything behind?” Shane asks suddenly. “Like… just dropping all of it, out here, in the desert?” The side of the road, the Italian restaurant, the bathtub, seeing the firelight reflected in Ryan’s eyes in Illinois… how does he keep _that?_  
  
“What do you mean?” Ryan asks, and Shane realizes he hasn’t put on any new music. He reaches for Ryan’s phone again and scrolls through the playlists, but he’s not pickng anything. He’s not even actually reading it.  
  
“I dunno, like… I don’t know how to… transfer it? How do we fit all this new stuff into how it was before? How it’s gonna be, back in L.A.?” Shane asks. He looks over, and Ryan’s brow is knitted a little, and Shane makes it a joke — has to. “Wha— why do you look so serious!?” he exclaims.  
  
"Do I?"  
  
“Yeah, you look sorta like you’re going to have to fight someone, Ry.” He’s laughing, but he doesn’t really feel like it.  
  
“I just… I was just thinking— why does L.A. mean we have to go back to how it was before?”  
  
“I dunno, Ryan, that’s just what happens.”  
  
“I… what?” Ryan asks, and he sounds… sort of small and half-frayed. “I don’t want to forget this,” Ryan says, glancing over. “I’m not going to… Like— we should… keep moving forward, dude, not just forget all this— I mean… right?”  
  
Shane’s stricken again, by Ryan’s bravery, and he looks away. “I didn’t say I wanted to forget, I just said— I just think it’s going to be easy to slip back into old habits.”  
  
“So let’s not,” Ryan says. Like it’s that easy.  
  
“How?”  
  
“I dunno,” Ryan says. “Just— anything. I mean… are we gonna tell people? About us?”  
  
Shane looks back because of the hesitation in Ryan’s voice. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, if you want to.”  
  
“So there’s that,” Ryan says. “That’s moving forward, right? And… I was sort of wondering… can you be there when I talk to my family about…?”  
  
When. _When._ Shane’s eyes go a little wider. “Yeah. Yeah, Ryan, _absolutely._ ”  
  
“Okay,” Ryan says, and it’s almost all relief. “Good. So there— there’s that. So. Now you.”  
  
“Me, what? Wait, you’re going to talk to your family because of _me?_ ”  
  
“Yeah, no, I'm going to talk to my parents because of C.C. Tinsley,” Ryan says, already grinning. “But actually... I think it’s gonna be okay.” And he's so determined, so hopeful, and Shane is so… “You name something,” Ryan’s saying again. “We’ll— we can like, make a promise right now. That’s how we’ll do this. What'd you say? Transfer it.”  
  
Shane panics a little, and he feels himself shut down, because that’s sort of what he does. “Maybe… I… I dunno, yet, Ry… I’ll think about it, okay? I promise.” And Ryan’s looking at him, and Shane’s not sure if Ryan believes him, but then Ryan nods, takes a breath, eyes back on the road.  
  
“Okay,” he says.  
  
“Okay,” Shane repeats. “Now let’s… I really want to stop being in cars. Let’s just get back.”  
  
“Okay,” Ryan laughs. And so they do.  
  
  


_Ryan_

 

Ryan watches Shane fold himself into his Prius after they’ve done the trade — the van for his car.  
  
“I’m a little sad to see it go, to be honest,” Shane says. He says it like a joke, but Ryan feels it in his bones. “Yeah,” he says. “But can you imagine driving that thing in downtown Los Angeles?”  
  
Shane wheezes. “Your murder van?”  
  
“It _is_ like a murder van, isn’t it?” Ryan laughs.  
  
After a while, they stop again for gas and snacks and five minutes not sitting down, just outside of L.A. Ryan’s already dreading the traffic. He pays for the gas with a mess of bills from both of them and is handed his plastic bag of snacks and drinks and other gas station miscellany. He turns and realizes he’s lost track of Shane in the station’s store and he wonders when it became such second nature to always subconsciously be looking for him.  
  
Ryan pushes the door open and steps back out in to the lot. Shane’s leaning against Ryan's car, too tall and a little spaced looking, and Ryan still can’t get over how it feels to see him. He’s just seen him two minutes ago, and he’s already happy to see him again. He closes his fingers around the handle of the plastic bag harder and knows his heart shouldn’t be beating this hard. “You ready, big guy?” he asks as he comes around to the driver’s side, and Shane’s eyes meet his over the roof of the car. Shane just towers over it.  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says, and he’s here again, present. “Let’s go.”  
  
They both climb back into the car and Ryan tosses the bag to Shane before he pulls back out onto the road. “Open something, I’m starving.”  
  
  


_Shane_

 

Shane pulls out the pop and puts it in the cup holder, then reaches back in for the chips and pulls out a brand new toothbrush instead. “What’s this?” he laughs. “Did you lose yours? I can't eat this.”  
  
“No I—" Ryan catches up to what he said, and he laughs a little. "I bought it to leave at your place,” Ryan says, looking over at him, and Shane realizes all at once that this was planned, at some point, because of course. It’s Ryan. He slides his thumb over the plastic of the packaging and feels something shudder in his chest and he knows it’s so stupid to be getting emotional over a toothbrush, but he is. He laughs because he’s afraid he might start falling to pieces if he doesn’t. “Oh my God, Ryan,” he says. “You’re such a—”  
  
“What?” Ryan asks, And he’s all nervous energy mixed with giggling, Shane can practically feel it radiating from him, and its infectious.  
  
“You’re such a _sap_ ,” Shane tells him, voice shaking with laugher and maybe something else, and his heart is beating so fast.  
  
“How dare you, sir,” Ryan says, and Shane laughs harder, leans over his knees with it, one arm braced against the dash.  
  
“The way your mind works— I mean,” Shane says, shaking his head, and he’s just— he’s just talking, really, because the words he needs already exist, they’re just — they’re taking a little longer to work out around the wild pounding of his heart. “All right,” Shane says. “Yeah, great. Great, Ryan, great.” Ryan’s already quipping something back but Shane can’t even hear it, because, “Move in with me,” Shane says.  
  
Dead silence falls, and Shane looks over just to see Ryan’s eyes get all big.  
  
Ryan apparently finally gets his brain to make words again and thank God, because Shane was starting to freak. “Are you serious, dude?”  
  
“Yeah,” Shane says. “That’s what I can do… like my promise to you, or whatever. It’s how we can bring— uh, how we do this. I mean—” _Fuck_ , what if it’s too much too fast? What if Ryan doesn’t want to?  
  
Ryan looks at him. “Okay,” he says.  
  
Shane pulls in a breath, trying to stay steady. It sort of works. “I said ‘with me,’” Shane tells him, “But I think I meant ‘with you’. I should. Move in with you.”  
  
“Well… yeah— what the fuck am I supposed to do with the toothbrush then?”  
  
Shane mimes chucking it out the window and Ryan laughs wildly.  
  
“Actually,” Ryan says, “That’s good, actually, because I kinda think your place sucks.”  
  
“All right…” Shane says, like he’s insulted. He’s not.  
  
“The heat doesn’t work, Shane!”  
  
“It works— it _sort of_ works!” Shane argues, "You just have to crank it up real high—"  
  
“Yeah, yeah, no it doesn’t.”  
  
“Fine. Fine, Ryan, I’ll tell you what you want to hear: Your apartment is bigger anyway.”  
  
Ryan’s wheezing. “Okay— all right, dude— just. Don’t ruin it.”  
  
Shane’s still chucking softly, but then they both go a little quiet, lost in their own thoughts. In just a few minutes, Shane knows they’re going to be sitting in bumper to bumper traffic instead of flying down the highway, and then something falls into place. He doesn’t know why he understands it right then — he's just sitting there thinking about traffic, but there it is, all at once, like an epiphany. It doesn’t matter where they go. L.A., Illinois, his place or Ryan’s… even fucking Utah… it really doesn’t matter at all.  
  
They both crave something the other has… Ryan is — always has been — drawn to these dark, haunted places, and Shane is drawn to things that are bright and warm, and he knows that that is bigger than the two of them, but —  but…  
  
And maybe Ryan can’t fully understand the darkness, not like Shane does. He probably doesn’t think about it the way that Shane does, anyway — trying to make some sense out of the connection of hearts and souls that goes beyond chemical and biological, because this— _this_ thing he feels for Ryan goes beyond all that. He’s certain it does…  
  
“We’re really doing this, right?” Ryan asks him softly, half-interrupting Shane’s thoughts. “I mean… we’re really—?”  
  
Shane opens his mouth to respond, but his mind’s still running. Shane had always thought that he had to find a way to create all this light for Ryan. To even _deserve_ him, but now he knows he doesn’t. Shane already holds the pieces of light that Ryan’s given to him. He holds them like a flashlight, a beacon — close to his chest. He’s been holding them for a long time and, somehow, against what Shane thought were all the odds, they’ve somehow connected there, where light and darkness meet, both of them operating like it’s the most natural thing in the world. They’re at the centre, and all of it — all the rest — can revolve around them. Dark, light, it doesn't matter, because they're supposed to be this way. They always needed both. He breaks the silence.  
  
“Yeah,” Shane tells him, “We’re really doing this.”  
  
“Okay.” Ryan glances over and their eyes meet. “All in?”  
  
Shane takes a deep breath and feels it fill him, and it’s like the world floods back in, and he’s present, and Ryan’s beside him, and that’s more than enough.  
  
“All in,” Shane answers, and when Ryan holds out a hand, suspended between them for a moment in the air, palm up, fingers curled loose and lovely, Shane reaches out like he’s thought about doing ten, a hundred, ten thousand times, and catches Ryan’s fingers through his, and holds on tight.  
  
And Shane understands, has been slowly realizing for a long time now, maybe, even as they fly past the sign welcoming them to L.A. (again). He realizes that he’s found home already.  
  
And it’s not a place.

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, thank you so much for all your wonderful comments, holy shit. Starting the new year with all of you being so lovely and so fucking incredible and wonderful and sweet -- thank you so much. I love you guys.  
> Also, major thanks to literalmetaphor, without whom this fic would not have been written nearly as fast as it was. Also, if you're sad this is over, go read her story two to fall apart, it's gonna blow your mind.


End file.
